What if Cro Magnon Man developed metal working?

Swordman

Banned
What would be the historical consequences of Cro Magnon Man developing metal working, say between 30,000 and 25,000 years ago? The possibilities are A) Bog Iron, B) copper (which occurs in its native form), C) gold & silver (both occur in their native forms), D) bronze (it is possible to create this accidentally)

Mike Garrity
 
Why, I think we did....yes, this spoon is made of metal! So is this computer case!:p

"Cro-Magnons" I think are basically the same as modern humans. And they were messing around with found chunks of the more chemically inert metals (gold, copper found sweated out of rocks in hearths, etc) right from the beginning.

OK, not a lot of metalworking tech in the timeframe you specified. However, I do think our modern metalworking methods have been evolving continuously since Paleolithic times. To postulate that the rate of advance picked up earlier is basically to postulate that technology in general did so, and that I presume is a function of population density (to transmit knowledge, plus putting the pressure of necessity behind the genius of invention), agriculture (to feed the denser population)--basically you are asking either

a) WI humans could create a technology without the objective basis it actually required OTL

or

b) WI human history for some reason was more advanced by 30,000 years?

The latter question is interesting in that the world climate would have been different during the rise of civilization. I'd think that it took the time it took between the development of modern humanity and the invention of agriculture for reasons, but maybe there is some wiggle room in the process of human settlement of the Earth to accelerate it and bring us to the point of the Neolithic that much earlier.

I'm ignoring a) unless you put forth some kind of scenario that explains why otherwise primitive and scattered humans would concentrate their efforts in this unnecessary direction.
 
I generally agree with Shevek. The basic premise to advance Civilization would be an earlier neolithic revolution. If Nomads tinker a bit with metal - so what? The impact will always be limited as their scope of products and of possibilites to produce will be a lot more limited then once there are settlements.

Now, I agree with Shevek that the topic is difficult and I am far from being an expert on the period. But nevertheless, the question is interesting and I would be glad to follow a discussion developing.

I would put it this way:

"Under the given climatic situation prior to the end of the last ice age, at what point of time and in what regions would a neolithic revolution be thinkable?"

The more I think about it is, that the NR might have been less dependant on human ingenuity, but on the brute force of climatic change, pushing the nomads out of the more and more arid deserts to the river valleys of the Nile, Jordan and Mesopotamia.
 
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