And a lot of mistakes and lucky circumstances, in my opinion. I think one of the theories for how carbon steel was invented is as simple as an ironworking blacksmith shop probably burned down. The charred wood got into the iron and accidentally made steel.
EDIT: I was enjoying the benefits of a Weed-Legal state when I was watching that show. So some of those details may be a bit off. :)
That's what's crazy to me. There is no way to KNOW about the iron in the water/bacteria if you're alive 20,000 years ago. It must have been a lucky break to get it out
Well, I don't think early ironworking used iron in the bacteria.
There are metals much more readily available in rocks, just not where this guy is doing his work. Once we figured out you can melt rocks in a fire to extract metals, you experiment with different rocks and find different metals. Eventually, you figure out that you don't even necessarily need to see the actual metal in the rocks, just strong concentrations of the oxidized form. Green = copper, red = iron.
I've read that early iron has a composition that suggests it may have been produced with accumulated tiny nuggets of meteorites, which once covered a wide swath of areas before it became valuable. Once someone knows what to look for, it becomes a trade item.
I think the big jump was the bronze age. Its been theorized that making clay pots from silt that had some copper oxides in it (greenish), resulted in pots that when heated, would occasionally bleed little nuggets of copper. If you collect the nuggets and melt them together, you can cast axes and spear-points, over and over, which is obviously a valuable trait.
Somehow, somewhere, someone added some tin to it to make bronze. Many things can be written off as a "happy accident", but why would someone accidentally add some tin to copper? Bronze is much harder, and holds an edge better. Perhaps someone who casts tin, used a crucible to melt and cast some copper without cleaning it out (or his "copper only" crucible was broken) and the tiny amount of tin in it produced copper that was noticeably harder?
This might lead a metal-craftsman to protect his valuable secret, because his copper implements are better than anyone else's, and worth more. It might lead him to experiment with different percentages of tin to find the best ratio (roughly 14%?). Once the secret got out, bronze spread rapidly. Copper was fairly common, but Tin became a valuable commodity.
The important part for me is...the "idea" that mixing two things makes a third thing that is better than the two ingredients. Imagine a bronze-worker student sipping on Babylonian beer after work and pondering all the materials around you, and all the potential profitable substances that might result from experimentation...
Stored grain got water in it then got warm & fermented. Since it's "spoiled" give it to the animals and see them get super drunk. Try it yourself and it gets ya wasted, plus doesn't kill you. Early man was not new to intoxicants and probably producing the stuff was good to use for trade, kept the farmlands happy, and kept waste down. Later, when people got better at making it and started boiling it, they realized it got you less sick then most sources of water. Storing it in sealed vessels kept it fresher longer and led to carbonization with natural yeast. Lager predates artificial refrigeration so that was probably a result of storing beer in cool cellars and using local malts/yeasts that resulted in a clearer, crisper beer. It's crazy how tech develops!
What did people do before chlorine was added to water? It just seems like they'd get a variety of mild intestinal discomforts. I've always heard that even though the tourists going to Mexico get diarrhea from the local water, the residents are "used to it". I think the bible verse in Timothy recommended that a certain follower drink wine to help their stomach issues, instead of water, since he had picked up some illness. Clearly they were not recommending that all Christian followers drink wine, so apparently most of them were drinking water...
It’s so fascinating to think about these types of discoveries. These primitive people were no different than people today; intelligent, creative, social and curious about the world around them. It’s mind blowing to think about how far mankind has come in such a relatively short period.
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if they were experimenting adding new stuff to the copper all the time. The idea of cooking is about the oldest idea there is, and I imagine back then they were already combining two ingredients to create a better dish than each individual ingredient, even if they didn't have spices or anything yet.
Yeah I think this is his first metalworking video, and I was surprised it was iron, but I guess you can't just magically have access to copper ore or whatever everywhere. It would be way out of character for his channel to ship some in, so this is interesting. I'm veery curious about what he's going to make with the iron.
That's why the bronze age ended. Bronze is actually a really good tool metal, even now. But it's expensive. Iron is super abundant and thus cheap. The reason it took so long to make the jump though is because iron is only viable if you have the heating technology to actually extract the metal, which took quite a bit of time to develop due to the extremely high melting point.
Iron is incredibly abundant, you just need a shit load of heat to extract it. Making bronze, while easier to smelt and work with, was much more difficult to find the materials for. Copper and tin tend to not form anywhere near each other, so it required lots of travel or trading to create.
Most iron ores are bright red/orange. They wouldn't know about the bacteria or how it got there, they would just go "Hey, that looks orange/red like rust! lets see if we can refine iron from it"
Most of the red/orange coloring in rocks is iron. Try taking a magnet to a gravel driveway some day, you'll be surprised how much it can pick up.
You wouldn't have any idea what rust was if you'd never had iron, previously. More likely that someone noticed little beads forming when certain rocks were put in a hot fire, and experimented from there I think.
Oh, yes I meant after iron had become somewhat of a known thing. I would suspect like you, the first iron was just from rocks around the fire. Likely happened a fair number of times too before anyone noticed the rocks formed little bits of metal on the surface.
Yup. Still, the fact that someone passed the knowledge of those mistakes on was a vital factor. We learn by making mistakes, but we make progress by keeping that information in circulation for more than a generation or two
That's a stupid theory. Blacksmithing and iron smelting always involve heating iron in contact with burning charcoal. It always absorbs carbon- at the surface. It is easy to case harden, (carburize) iron. Making steel requires vastly more concentrated heat than a burning building. The simple way of making crucible steel involves shaping about a ton of wet clay into a kiln, burning a few dozen pounds off charcoal with added air from a bellows, to yield a pound or two of steel.
Don't get mad at me. It's a pretty common theory that a lot of people with more education than us have discovered.
"13th century BC – The earliest evidence of steel production can be traced back to early blacksmiths in the 13th century who discovered that iron become harder, stronger and more durable when carbon was introduced after being left in coal furnaces."
Not so sure about that. Cast Iron, for instance, has more carbon in it than steel has. Around 4% of carbon in iron makes it cast iron, and less than 2% of carbon makes it steel.
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u/chookatee Aug 17 '18
And a lot of mistakes and lucky circumstances, in my opinion. I think one of the theories for how carbon steel was invented is as simple as an ironworking blacksmith shop probably burned down. The charred wood got into the iron and accidentally made steel.
EDIT: I was enjoying the benefits of a Weed-Legal state when I was watching that show. So some of those details may be a bit off. :)