W.I: Iron tools in Mesoamerica

VictorVanBakker

I remember reading earlier how sub-Saharan Africa did not have a bronze age but jumped from the stone age to the iron age directly, and I was wondering if the same could happen in the Americas. What if iron was developed early on in the history of Mesoamerican civilisation, let's say that the Olmec discover it, how would this affect the course of history in Mexico and Central America? One thing is I imagine there would be a lot of early deforestation in order to provide charcoal. How long would it take to for iron tools and weapon to spread throughout the Americas? Lastly, what is the plausibility of this whole scenario?
 

Alex Zetsu

Funny thing, iron weapons were almost always inferior to their bronze counterparts. Bronze was stronger, but it suffered a few limitations. Both copper and tin were more rare than iron. More importantly, iron is a metal and can be melted and moulded. Also, when you get a blemish or scratch on a bronze weapon, you can't fix it the way you can with a pure metal or steel (bexuase steel is a special alloy with differnet properites... long explination). When iron or steel weapons were damaged or cracked, you just needed to heat them up and bang them into shape again.
 

Jürgen

Yes the main benefit of iron are the lack of the need for a massive trading network. As example the Bronze Age trade network was massive, but it seem in the early Iron Age local culture was far more self sufficient. As example let's take Denmark, to produce bronze here you needed tin from Cornwall, while in the early iron age you could produce bog iron from local sources. The problem with iron are that it's harder to start out with. The Africans seem to pretty much the only ones who developed it directly without using other metals before.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

VictorVanBakker said:
Interesting, why do you think this is?
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Ahh... Because it is?
In other words. Copper smelting can happen by accident when you build a hot enough fire on bare rock that happens to be copper ore. Some copper ores are natural arsenical, and smelting them gives you a very primitive bronze. Once you've developed the idea of smelted metal tools, it's easier to try smelting other ores and see what happens (especially if you don't have good copper resources, say).

Iron is much, much harder to melt. You can't get it to happen by accident. So why would you try, unless you already are smelting something easier (e.g. copper, silver or gold).

Now. The Mesoamericans and Andeans DID smelt copper, silver and gold. So the idea of trying something with iron is certainly possible.

Note that
a) America does not have good sources of tin - at least anywhere near copper sources - so they're not going to be coming up with copper-tin bronze
b) early iron, until you spend a few hundred years working with it, and learning how to do it right, is not as useful as bronze for tools and weapons. The Hittites, e.g., probably started playing with iron because it was better than copper and imported tin was EXPENSIVE. However, Iron weapons/tools, even early versions, still beat copper ones. So there is a good route there for Mesoamericans or Andeans. Start with lousy tools, and spend several hundred years learning how to deal with iron.
c) OTOH, the Mesoamericans did not, as I understand it, use copper for weapons, or even very much as tools. Unlike Mesopotamia, say. So there's just not as much pressure to find something 'better'. What they DID use metals for, a lot, was decoration, jewelry, and iron (short of stainless steel) just isn't 'pretty'.
 

Richard V

Bolivia is the only place on Earth where major tin and copper deposites are located close to each other. The use of copper as decoration instead of tool in the Americas is somewhat exaggerated. At least by late pre-Columbian era. Copper carpentry axes were common among the Aztecs and was used by them as a wedding dowery. It's not clear to me if they made them or abtained them from their neighbors.

Although it is generally accepted that Africa did not have a bronze age prior to their iron age, people in Niger did smelt copper a thousand years before the adoption of iron. This does not qualify as a bronze or copper age because it was pretty isolated.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Had another thought.

A society with smithing (e.g. Mesoamerica) lucks into a large nickel-iron meteorite, say up to 100kg - with smaller bits that separated from the main bolide as it came in.
(e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite, except in, say, Mexico)
Someone discovers how to work this star metal, and makes some legendary daggers or knives from it. Over the years, they learn to maintain these tools - which means dealing with rusting. Perhaps one such object is thrown into a lake, possibly during an invasion, and the largely rusted tool is slowly recovered, re-reducing the rust on a forge with repeated working.

Then some bright kid says. Hey, there's rock over here that looks a lot like rust, what happens if we try the process on that?

Of course, in real life, the ore wouldn't be iron, or wouldn't be rich enough for obvious iron to be developed, and it would be a clearly inferior product to the 'holy' nickel alloy star metal, but it would let nobles and rich merchants (say) have their own 'imitation holy objects', and a better tool than just copper.
 

Richard V

VictorVanBakker said:
So what be the main social consequences of the region adopting iron?
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More construction using iron cut lumber, stone. High temperature smelter technology leads to advances in pottery and tiles. Rise in demand for extra labor to supply large quantities of charcoal. Iron tools means more productive agriculture. Thus more numerous and larger permanent settlements. More lethal weapons leading to improvements in shield and armor.
 
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