Why did Native Americans never develop ironworking?
- Thread starter Night Gaul
- Start date
SwampTiger
Banned
Early iron tools/weapons were not better than bronze tools/weapons because early iron, non-carburized or alloyed, is softer than bronze. It is, however, much more abundant in most regions of the world. Thus, the cost of iron tools/weapons is much lower. The development of iron weapons required the ability to produce high temperature kilns to melt the iron ore. Early iron smelting was at lower temperatures than optimal, resulting in blooms, agglomerations, of processed iron containing nodules of impurities within the bloom. The process of removing the nodules required hammering the bloom to break up the nodules, reheating the bloom, and hammering the bloom again. This continued until the smith was relatively sure the bloom was pure iron. The process was therefore more labor intensive. The more easily accessible iron surpassed bronze in the Mediterranean when tin trade networks collapsed due to migrations into the area by new peoples, the so called Sea Peoples, which led to the Bronze Age Collapse.
Returning to the cost factor, the armies of the Early Iron Age grew larger than the Bronze Age armies because the cost to equip them dropped substantially. The reason Sub-Saharan Africa developed iron so early was they had less access to tin or arsenical bronze. In the New World, you could have had a culture make the same leap. It would require a sedentary culture with access to high heat kilns and iron ore. Several New World cultures were possible crucibles of such development.
The failure of the Americans to develop iron technology is a fluke in my opinion. All the necessary conditions were present. Small scale iron use was present. No one had taken the leap to develop tools and weapons of iron. Similar to knowledge of the wheel. You can know of something, but not adapt that thing or technology in the same manner as someone else.
Returning to the cost factor, the armies of the Early Iron Age grew larger than the Bronze Age armies because the cost to equip them dropped substantially. The reason Sub-Saharan Africa developed iron so early was they had less access to tin or arsenical bronze. In the New World, you could have had a culture make the same leap. It would require a sedentary culture with access to high heat kilns and iron ore. Several New World cultures were possible crucibles of such development.
The failure of the Americans to develop iron technology is a fluke in my opinion. All the necessary conditions were present. Small scale iron use was present. No one had taken the leap to develop tools and weapons of iron. Similar to knowledge of the wheel. You can know of something, but not adapt that thing or technology in the same manner as someone else.
Alarico Rodríguez
Banned
I'm pretty sure Caribs did. They were raiding the whole Caribbean sea and wresting control of islands from the Tainos, raiding of course Cuba and Hispaniola itself as well. It's hard to do that if your ships don't have sail and work purely by rowing.
Alarico Rodríguez
Banned
Native Americans melted platinum, which has a higher melting point than steel.
SwampTiger
Banned
I stated the Native Americans had the conditions for iron smelting. They simply never took the next step.
There’s one Spanish account of a lateen rig raft off the coast of Peru in 1526. That’s the only one we have of sail in that period. It is suspiciously singular. There are no native accounts of a sailing tradition, and the incident took place some years after the Spanish arrived so technological diffusion could be an explanation. Either pre-Columbian America didn’t have sail or the adoption was still in it’s infancy during contact.
They sintered it or used other metals to solder it, they didn't melt it.