AHC: Ancient "Aluminum Age"
- Thread starter Dorozhand
- Start date
The challenges faced here are multiple:
First, the relative lack of native aluminum in the world, and the difficulty of going from "this material exists" to "this material can be made useful by an easy process." It occurs inside volcanoes. Not particularly helpful there. Iron from meteorites was known for millenia. Native copper happens sometimes. Copper in metallic form can be extracted from some clays in a very hot kiln, if native copper isn't available--indeed, that's likely how the Copper Age got started--a potter discovering copper residue in his kiln. Aluminum is typically produced from Al2O3 by a rather complex process involving a mineral most readily found in Greenland.
And you need an electric current to then produce metallic aluminum. A crude voltaic pile could supply the needed voltage, but only at a very small current (V = IR). Which means not very much aluminum produced, even assuming that the apparatus needed to melt cryolite at around 1300 K is possible.
And where will they get ore? Bauxite? How would they stumble upon the technique of making alumina out of bauxite? They would need NaOH--which has its own set of technological challenges.
So what does that leave? It leaves digging cryolite out of Greenland (or elsewhere), towing it to your population center, heating it up, and dumping rubies and sapphires into the mixture, while plugging a dozen Baghdad Batteries into it to make a small amount of a metal that isn't as strong as (much more readily available) iron.
I'm going to say that a pre-modern Aluminum Age just isn't happening.
Yes, it's ironic how the Aluminium is the most abundant metal in the crust, but is basically impossible to produce without an industrial level of technology.
Similar to the bicycle. Such a simple concept, but you can't produce them without the technology from highly developed metallurgy.
What about bikes made of Aluminium?
Similar to the bicycle. Such a simple concept, but you can't produce them without the technology from highly developed metallurgy.
What about bikes made of Aluminium?
Sorry to be pickie but Silicon is the most abundant metal.
Aluminium needs electricity so not able to be produced until after 1820 at the earliest.
If you are looking for light metals then Zinc would be a better as this was produced in India in the 10th centrury.
Silicon is a metalloid, not a metal. Silicon's electrons aren't "free floating" in the pure form which while not *the* defnition of a metal, is one of the most common. Yes, you get Metal-Silicon Alloys, but Carbon does that as well.
And agree with everything that Polish Eagle says above.
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The only way I can see this happening is if the natural world cooperates, either by having large native deposits of aluminum metal encapsulated in a way that keeps oxygen from the metal, or by some anaerobic bacteria processing natural alums in a fermentatuion-like process to produce aluminium as the metal. [It's been theorized that some bacteria have the ability to process aluminum compounds and release native aluminum in ocean cold seeps, so the concept shouldn't be totally ludicrous].
The problem is that Al is incredibly reactive. You dont get free aluminum like you dont get free potassium or sodium.
If you did have it, its tough to work with, eg you cant weld it with anything short of 20th c tech.
So, no.
If you did have it, its tough to work with, eg you cant weld it with anything short of 20th c tech.
So, no.
I have one day thinking about a civilization based on another metal : the nickel.
I know it's difficult to exploit but in the antiquity there were some coin in cupronickel in Bactria. I imagine than a civilization without bronze can make an important use of cupronickel who is as hard as bronze.
I imagine also than the only land who can make this is New Caledonia. This island lack tin but have some copper and the largest deposit of nickel in the world and the nickel ore in new caledonia is green and look like the copper ore.
First i imagine than a Kanak potter discover copper metal in a pottery oven. Then they can experiment with another green stone who is not copper ore but nickel ore and make cupronickel.
Century later the kanak can switch to iron who are abundent on the island.
I know it's difficult to exploit but in the antiquity there were some coin in cupronickel in Bactria. I imagine than a civilization without bronze can make an important use of cupronickel who is as hard as bronze.
I imagine also than the only land who can make this is New Caledonia. This island lack tin but have some copper and the largest deposit of nickel in the world and the nickel ore in new caledonia is green and look like the copper ore.
First i imagine than a Kanak potter discover copper metal in a pottery oven. Then they can experiment with another green stone who is not copper ore but nickel ore and make cupronickel.
Century later the kanak can switch to iron who are abundent on the island.