Does the Bronze Age “have” to happen?

So, I am still in the preliminary stages of research for the timeline Not My Heifer, with a POD in the Copper Age. I am currently visiting my in-laws, and my brother-in-law put me onto YouTube video by Shadowversity that discussed early examples of steel... some of which seem to have come from the Bronze Age, although these early steel items were usually jewelry.


This got me thinking... what if the Bronze Age had been skipped? It would be a crying shame of course, cuz bronze is definitely beautiful, but... isn’t iron more abundant than copper and tin anyways? I mean, when you think about it, copper and tin don’t really occur next to each other in the first place, which meant that complex trading networks had to be developed for the mass production of bronze items to even be a thing in the first place. And when you think about it a little more, that was a very specific development in history, right? Who says that a Middle Eastern copper Smith ever gets the idea to mix copper and tin? Why not simply use iron, which is far more common than either?
 
It should be noted the Bronze Age didn't use just standard copper-tin alloys, but also copper-arsenic. And arsenic does tend to co-locate with copper in some ores.

So if craftsmen start with copper, which makes sense (melting at 1080 degC, compared to iron's 1540), then arsenical bronze makes a lot of sense, and once you know you can mix and match metals it's not too far a leap to try an easy melter like tin (230 degC).

Tin and noble metals would of course come along if you went to copper, but they're not as useful for tools since they're softer. Plus they tend to rarity.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
It took awhile to develop the techniques to smelt iron ore and forge iron weapons and tools.

Though I'd think it's possible.
 
isn’t iron more abundant than copper and tin anyways?

Yes, but copper could be found native and thus not requiring much metallurgy whereas iron is by and large only to be found as iron ore thus needing a more complex production right off the bat.

Simply being more abundant doesn't necessarily do the trick anyways: in the Earth's crust is even more aluminium than iron but it wasn't until the 18th century that they noticed that it is a metal, it's industrial use took even a bit longer.
 
According to geologists, Europe in 10,000 BC used to have significant amounts of surface deposits of copper. It was only physically bounded, so it could be purified by heating them to a small bonfire. Curiously, there doesn't seemtobeany left on the surface.
 
Iron has a much higher melting point so societies have to have greater control of fire in order to smelt/forge iron as opposed to copper and tin. In addition, iron ore must be refined in order to be useful, which makes skipping the bronze age difficult for the same reason. Not saying it's impossible to skip bronze, but it may be stretching plausibility, and it would take very specific circumstances that you would have to clearly illustrate
 
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The trick, I think, is to get fires hot enough to smelt iron. Fires hot enough to smelt copper were something of an acccident IOTL (reached through pottery kilns).

To skip the Bronze Age, you therefore at least need a reason to have phenomenally hot fires.
 
The trick, I think, is to get fires hot enough to smelt iron. Fires hot enough to smelt copper were something of an acccident IOTL (reached through pottery kilns).

To skip the Bronze Age, you therefore at least need a reason to have phenomenally hot fires.
Look at Africa, they had timber that can naturally burn hot enough. Failing that get charcoal or coke, yes they were expensive but once a tribe armed themselves with (good) iron it behooves everyone else to adopt iron.
 
Iron has a much higher melting point so societies have to have greater control of fire in order to smelt/forge iron as opposed to copper and tin. In addition, iron ore must be refined in order to be useful, which makes skipping the bronze age for the same reason. Not saying it's impossible to skip bronze, but it may be stretching plausibility, and it would take very specific circumstances that you would have to clearly illustrate

So, apparently we have carbon steel fragments (likely for jewelry) dating from circa 1800 BC from Kaman-Kalehöyük in Turkey, which means that the people DID in fact have the capacity to work iron at the time. The question is therefore not as much about being able to (we know that they were, at least in some places), but applying this smelting capability to tools and weapons instead of decorative items. Is it possible that the use of bronze was just so institutionalized by this time that groundbreaking advances in metallurgy would have threatened a cultural elite?


I’m not even sure I want to do away with the Bronze Age, because I think it was a very important period for the social and political development of Eurasia (in terms of development of multiple layers of social cohesion by way of the development of complicated webs of trade), but I am confused as to how this is stretching any limits of plausibility.
 
So, apparently we have carbon steel fragments (likely for jewelry) dating from circa 1800 BC from Kaman-Kalehöyük in Turkey, which means that the people DID in fact have the capacity to work iron at the time. The question is therefore not as much about being able to (we know that they were, at least in some places), but applying this smelting capability to tools and weapons instead of decorative items. Is it possible that the use of bronze was just so institutionalized by this time that groundbreaking advances in metallurgy would have threatened a cultural elite?

I’m not even sure I want to do away with the Bronze Age, because I think it was a very important period for the social and political development of Eurasia (in terms of development of multiple layers of social cohesion by way of the development of complicated webs of trade), but I am confused as to how this is stretching any limits of plausibility.

Huh, the more you know I guess. Skipping the bronze age would definitely change the distribution of economic/political power. For example, the Hittites IIRC had a virtual monopoly on tin in the near East, so scrapping the Bronze age might confine Anatolia to being a political backwater, since it doesn't have many other resources I know of. Definitely interested to see where you take the TL. Imo, more different from OTL is always better with these super ancient TLs, so I'd say skip it if you feel like it would be more interesting and plausible enough.
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
1 - Africa skipping the Bronze age is a hypothesis, not fact. And considering the state of archeology there ...
2 - looking at copper/bronze and iron smelting tech is IMO only part of the picture - one should keep an eye on pottery firing. Those two areas are related and advances in one spilled over to the other.
 
1 - Africa skipping the Bronze age is a hypothesis, not fact. And considering the state of archeology there ...

It's a strong hypothesis based on the lack of bronze artifacts appearing older than steel ones as of 1970 (and probably to today since there might not be any to find). What bronze found is something newer and not clearly in the "this is a bronze tool since we lack steel and iron" but often more like "well, hey by point everyone knows bronze and brass can be pretty"

It would be like finding out that the Aztecs did invent the wheel and had carts, but none of them survived archeology and the Spanish didn't bother mentioning them. Yes it's possible, but Ocam's razpor says no wheels.

And in parts of Africa, that razor says no bronze Age. And someone people think the razor is always right (if you do, you have to bleeive this, if not, OK I don't either)
 
It isn't just a matter of the higher melting point of iron, or its relative abundance, as mentioned above.

Bronze was used well into the early iron age* because bronze was stronger than the iron that was being produced at the time. Iron ore has a lot of impurities (such as sulphur), which needs to be removed. Ideally it needs to be processed into steel in order for it to be an actual improvement. Despite all the hype about "thunderbolt" (i.e. meteoric) iron, it was actually poor quality. There's a page on Wikipedia on it.

Maybe you could skip the copper-tin alloy of bronze, and stick with the copper-arsenic variety.


*indeed, it's still used for some things.
 
It seems archeologists are not sure if arsenic bronze was ever deliberately produced or simply the result of copper ores contaminated with arsenic. Technologically one of the easiest ways people can make arsenic bronze is adding minerals like orpiment and realgar to molten copper, but there is no evicence this was historically done.
 
It's a strong hypothesis based on the lack of bronze artifacts appearing older than steel ones as of 1970 (and probably to today since there might not be any to find). What bronze found is something newer and not clearly in the "this is a bronze tool since we lack steel and iron" but often more like "well, hey by point everyone knows bronze and brass can be pretty"

It would be like finding out that the Aztecs did invent the wheel and had carts, but none of them survived archeology and the Spanish didn't bother mentioning them. Yes it's possible, but Ocam's razpor says no wheels.

And in parts of Africa, that razor says no bronze Age. And someone people think the razor is always right (if you do, you have to bleeive this, if not, OK I don't either)

what African societies or parts of Africa is this relating to?
 
If your PoD stays in the middle 4th mill., then Bronze has already been experimented with in several places. No Bronze at all (there are so many varieties to it!) appears weird, but earlier and more widespread iron use is not at all excluded, I'd say, since those firing technologies are not out of reach of EBA/MBA societies. Trading Networks were often strained or temporarily collapsed, so the need to look for alternatives is certainly there.

No (semi-) exclusive reliance on bronze could Butterfly the palatial economies we know in some places, especially where they had to do with long-distance trade. It might, for example, condemn the British islands to being even more of a backwater for a longer time.
 
If your PoD stays in the middle 4th mill., then Bronze has already been experimented with in several places. No Bronze at all (there are so many varieties to it!) appears weird, but earlier and more widespread iron use is not at all excluded, I'd say, since those firing technologies are not out of reach of EBA/MBA societies. Trading Networks were often strained or temporarily collapsed, so the need to look for alternatives is certainly there.

No (semi-) exclusive reliance on bronze could Butterfly the palatial economies we know in some places, especially where they had to do with long-distance trade. It might, for example, condemn the British islands to being even more of a backwater for a longer time.

What places benefit though?
 
Copper Alloy Age is probably a more accurate moniker.
Considering its workability and being relatively commonplace I think skipping use of it would be difficult.
 
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