Why didn't the Andean Civilizations enter the Iron Age?

NothingNow

Banned
But one can also (for many uses) use wrought iron, which is greatly superior to cast iron.

Swords and armor come to mind.
That's still very energy intensive compared to producing bronze, and wrought Iron is still too ductile, and dumpy-looking for the sorts of things the Andeans would want to use them for.

Bronze however for the Andean civilizations, is easily producible, noticeably stronger, more aesthetically pleasing and much cheaper than wrought iron. There's no real reason to even consider the transition.

Cast iron might've been useful at the time if someone wanted to build a fancy throne or something, but even then, you could get a better result, aesthetically speaking from cast Bronze, and it wouldn't corrode.

They could have harvested trees from the Amazon, maybe? The Inca Empire did extend there.

Transporting all that charcoal across the empire would get really expensive, really fast.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Can you even make good-enough-quality charcoal from rainforest trees under rainforest condtions?

In the dry season, yes.
If you want year-round production, you'd have to haul the wood to someplace dry enough to let the wood sit properly before throwing it in the kiln.
 
While I realize you are indeed correct about knitting, not so for nålebinding. And the Paracas culture long predates the medieval era.

That wiki article goes on at length about Coppergate which is Viking era and predates Pizzarro by a few centuries :p

Basically, these things developed independently in different parts of the world, which doesn't detract from your point at all.


-----


I think in general people really underestimate how long it took for Eurasian peoples to move into the Iron age. Iron and Lead are among the earliest metals smelted but it took possibly millennia before they became widely used.

And as ancient as copper metallurgy was in the Andes there's no real evidence to suggest it was continuous for that entire period. Copper-working societies, whether using tin bronze or arsenic bronze, got repeatedly replaced by stone age societies that quickly started using bronze after that.

This is quite different about how things went down in Europe/the Levant.
 
Last edited:
My reasons are based off the effect of Roman conquest in Europe.

1. The Romans brought a system of learning that is the basis of most of Europe's languages. This common tongue allowed the faster development and spread of technology.

Latin-derived languages are spoken by less than a third of all currently living Europeans/Mediterranean people whether you only take Europe or the former Roman territorry, and way less than that if you take both.

The linguistic barriers weren't a dealbreaker in the middle ages though. Scholarly languages (Greek, Latin, Arabic) were sufficient to spread knowledge through the writing classes without the populations at large being remotely familiar with them.

Likewise they weren't a dealbreaker for the ancient Mediterranean even though Greek/Aramaic/Punic/Latin speakers were not necessarily dominant in numbers.

There was a common cultural space in the Med including parts of Barbarian Europe, just like there was a common cultural space in Mexico, Guatemala etc. despite linguistic differences.

There was no common space between the Mesoamericans and the Andes.

2. Those that hoped to avoid war or defeat the Romans had to start buying their weapons. Those that were conquered adopted these weapons into their culture. For the Inca in this scenario it would make them very rich, as Amazonian tribes and even as far as the Maya and Aztecs began to buy or look for copper mines of their own.

The Romans took the scutum and the hasta from the Samnites, the helmet and the Gladius from the various north Italic peoples, the long spear from the Greeks, the falcata from the Iberians...the mail from the Gauls, the breastplate from the Etruscans, the Trireme from the Carthaginians and the Greeks...the Romans arrived into a world firmly in the Iron age and their innovation was probably organisational. The uniquely Roman things are (maybe) pila, 3rd c. matriobarbuli, and perhaps the segmentata (1st-3rd c. CE).

It's not a directly comparable situation.
 
That's still very energy intensive compared to producing bronze, and wrought Iron is still too ductile, and dumpy-looking for the sorts of things the Andeans would want to use them for.

So, Andeans would have no interest in the things that other cultures found wrought iron being dumpy-looking not to be a problem - thus the reference to swords and armor.

Its not as if all metalworking needs to be for pretties.
 
There was a tribe that the Incans conquered that used Copper Axeheads as currency. It may have been the Chimu, though I am not sure. There were tombs in the Andes found full of copper Axeheads of Rich members of this tribe who decided to take their wealth with them as well as few ritually killed servants to serve them in the afterlife.
 
Last edited:
@Hrvtskiwi: Thank you for pointing that out, my bad.

Anyway, I would like to say that a POD would have to be much earlier and cultural factors would have to change so greatly as to make a plausible Iron Age Andes almost moot: The societies would probably be so different that they would be just as culturally "Andean" (in the OTL sense) as culturally anything else.
KarneeKarnay said:
([...])
My reasons are based off the effect of Roman conquest in Europe.

1. The Romans brought a system of learning that is the basis of most of Europe's languages. This common tongue allowed the faster development and spread of technology.

2. Those that hoped to avoid war or defeat the Romans had to start buying their weapons. Those that were conquered adopted these weapons into their culture. For the Inca in this scenario it would make them very rich, as Amazonian tribes and even as far as the Maya and Aztecs began to buy or look for copper mines of their own.

3. This increased and larger trade networks, would further spread the technologies and culture of the Inca, just as it did for the Romans.

4. Increased trade and development of the Potato or something along those lines. Animal live stock will take second place as populations start to grow rapidly.

5. Necessity is the mother of all invention. The Aztecs are in perfect position to start looking for ores in the Mexican Mountains that are stronger than the Inca. They discover Iron and like how Copper spread before it, it will spread south.

6. The Inca will either adopt this new material and begin looking for it themselves or perish.

What you need for this to happen is essentially another 200 years (Before the Spaniards arrive.). You need a brutal and fast conquest of South America and Central America. Make it last three generations then let it implode. You have just jump-started the civilizations of America.

The end of all this will leave you with South America and Central America dark age level of civ. They are still going to take a pounding by the Europeans, but they might just survive.
Well, the Inka did conquer a pretty large area. But I will look at each of your points in turn:

  1. Have you ever heard of Quechua? The Inka had a policy of incorporating newly conquered people into the pool of Quechuaphones, by various means. The - still largely mutually intelligible - descendants of Classical Quechua - the official language of the Inka Empire - is still widely spoken today - and remains most widely spoken Amerindian language as well, in fact - from Ecuador to Chile.
  2. Agreed, to some extent: Inka success lied more in civics than military technology.
  3. And they did, such as when the Chimú artisans of Chan Chan, capitol of a defeated Chimor, were transferred to Qusqu to work for the Inka.
  4. As I may have stated before, I simply do not think that is necessary, given the efficiency and sophistication of Inka food and agricultural policy.
  5. Indeed it is; however, remember, Mesoamerican metallurgy only really developed under Chimú influence, probably because of the abundance of obsidian in the former region.
  6. I don't think this one of your points is applicable given mine.
Well, after your six points, I simply do not find any evidence for most of your points: For example, the Mid Horizon (an Andeanist's chronological term for 600 CE to the dawn of the second millennium) civilizations of Wari and Tiwanaku were already well ahead of anything the West had during Dark Ages in many major areas, such as sanitation, medicine, infrastructure, agronomy and even in many ways architecture: Just look at grid plan, aqueducts and roads of Wari or Tiwanaku's masonry or its drainage system.
 
Top