Iron metallurgy in the Americas?
- Thread starter Cochlea
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The Inca were smelting arsenic bronze and the Greenland Inuit cold forging meteor iron. Plus you had tumbaga an alloy of copper/gold/silver. In Vinland the Beothuk wanted steel weaopons whick was a major trade item after Columbus. Basically with access to large amounts of bronze and/or steel the map would definitely change. It might make weak tribes powerful or turn an already strong tribe into an empire.
My guess: No widespread use of bronze. In the Old World, widespread use of iron tools and weapons came only after 2,000 years of widespread use of bronze tools. But iron smelting is much more difficult than bronze, gold, or silver smelting. Since metals were used in the Americas primarily for decorative reasons, there may not have been any push to adopt harder materials, and iron doesn't have that great of value as a decorative material in comparison to the much easier to craft copper, gold, or silver. If you'll forgive me for quoting Wikipedia:
"smelted iron requires hot-working and can be melted only in specially designed furnaces. It is therefore not surprising that humans only mastered iron smelting after several millennia of bronze metallurgy."
Makes sense to me.
So then, why wasn't bronze use widespread in South and Central America? Maybe tin was the limiting factor. From my understanding access to tin is always the main hindrance to making bronze, since it's much less common than copper. South America had a fully developed smelting culture for gold and copper alloys, but only made a small amount of bronze. So it seems that in South and Central America they were entirely technologically capable of doing making bronze en masse, the fact that they didn't seems most likely to be due to lack of resources. Anyway that's my guess, I have no actual idea what the distribution of pre-Columbian tin deposits in South America was like compared to Eurasia.
"smelted iron requires hot-working and can be melted only in specially designed furnaces. It is therefore not surprising that humans only mastered iron smelting after several millennia of bronze metallurgy."
Makes sense to me.
So then, why wasn't bronze use widespread in South and Central America? Maybe tin was the limiting factor. From my understanding access to tin is always the main hindrance to making bronze, since it's much less common than copper. South America had a fully developed smelting culture for gold and copper alloys, but only made a small amount of bronze. So it seems that in South and Central America they were entirely technologically capable of doing making bronze en masse, the fact that they didn't seems most likely to be due to lack of resources. Anyway that's my guess, I have no actual idea what the distribution of pre-Columbian tin deposits in South America was like compared to Eurasia.
It's been discussed in a handful of threads. Eurasia has a handful of deposits of tin near copper ores, and thus it's a lot easier to get bronze. While the Americas had both tin and copper they were rarely near each other.
That said, the Inca had been working bronze for a century or two, and one of the tribes in Mesoamerica (not the Aztecs or Maya) had just started by the time the Spanish showed up.
Some of that was arsenical bronze, which is nasty to forge, and it was a relatively recent development in both places, in any case. The Bronze Age in the Middle East lasted how long? Some 2000 years according to Wiki (Middle East and South Asia).
So... Getting people to work bronze 2000 years earlier would do it. Maybe even 1000 years earlier.
Getting meteoric iron in quantities to copper SMELTING areas might work (but that's really difficult. The Inuit could find meteorites on pack ice/glaciers, way north. Copper smelting was pretty far south.
Having Romans/Phoenicians/Norse/whomever show up and introduce iron working to the locals, even if the settlements didn't survive.
Or. West Africa apparently went from copper to Iron with no Bronze in between, so it seems possible that that could happen in the Americas somewhere. But no one understands how that happened, AFAIK, so trying to duplicate it might involve ... handwaving.
That said, the Inca had been working bronze for a century or two, and one of the tribes in Mesoamerica (not the Aztecs or Maya) had just started by the time the Spanish showed up.
Some of that was arsenical bronze, which is nasty to forge, and it was a relatively recent development in both places, in any case. The Bronze Age in the Middle East lasted how long? Some 2000 years according to Wiki (Middle East and South Asia).
So... Getting people to work bronze 2000 years earlier would do it. Maybe even 1000 years earlier.
Getting meteoric iron in quantities to copper SMELTING areas might work (but that's really difficult. The Inuit could find meteorites on pack ice/glaciers, way north. Copper smelting was pretty far south.
Having Romans/Phoenicians/Norse/whomever show up and introduce iron working to the locals, even if the settlements didn't survive.
Or. West Africa apparently went from copper to Iron with no Bronze in between, so it seems possible that that could happen in the Americas somewhere. But no one understands how that happened, AFAIK, so trying to duplicate it might involve ... handwaving.
My favorite pod for the development of iron working in the new world is the existence of a viking colonist at Vinland who has experience with iron working. This colonist then gets capture by the natives and winds up near an iron ore deposit (maybe the one near labradoe city??) where he teaches the locals how to smelt iron in exchange for his freedom. I feel that, while unlikely, such a scenario is plausible and could result in the spread of iron working throughout the rest of the Americas over the next 400-500 years. However, you'd at best get early iron age tech from this. You probably wouldn't get steel or anything that would really compare to medieval Europe.
1) Every Icelandic farm had a forge and smelted its own bog iron.
2) There's lots of bog iron in Newfoundland.
3) so, all it takes is a relatively random Icelander integrating with the local natives.
4) OTOH, none of the locals in Newfoundland (or probably anywhere else the Norse reached) practiced agriculture. You're not likely to be smelting iron if you're a hunter-gatherer tribe.
5) Oh. And Viking is a job description, not an ethnicity. There was no 'viking' exploration/settlement in the Americas.
Iron seems to have a very long learning curve. In Asia Minor, iron working existed from about 2500 BC if not earlier (I just saw a Early Bronze age iron dagger in a museum in Ankara two days ago; the difference in quality and conservation with the bronze objects from the same age and site is striking) but it took a milennium and half to become a major thing in any way. The point is probably that iron as such is not worth much until you have learned some quite sophisticated metallurgy already.
Then there's West Africa.
A thing that bronze does, and iron largely does not, is fostering massive trade networks. Without pack animals, though, it gets complicated.
There's actually a place in the Americas where copper, tin and pack animals were all present, and that was the Andes; actually where you find some bronze working in the New World.
Problem is that the Andes are a terrible place for transportation of large quantities of stuff, hosting some of the most rugged terrain around. The Inkan empire did wonders to ease these issues, but the enviromental difficulties are significantly bigger than in most of Eurasia.
Then there's West Africa.
A thing that bronze does, and iron largely does not, is fostering massive trade networks. Without pack animals, though, it gets complicated.
There's actually a place in the Americas where copper, tin and pack animals were all present, and that was the Andes; actually where you find some bronze working in the New World.
Problem is that the Andes are a terrible place for transportation of large quantities of stuff, hosting some of the most rugged terrain around. The Inkan empire did wonders to ease these issues, but the enviromental difficulties are significantly bigger than in most of Eurasia.
Driftless
Donor
There's native copper in the U.P. of Michigan, and Iron ore just off the west end of Lake Superior in what is now Minnesota, so some of the ingredients were there. Bog iron is found near the southern end of Lake Michigan. No coal anywhere close though, but lots of hardwood trees for charcoal