Is there even evidence of copper swords existing? The whole Copper Age is really just in our “history” because it has to be. The archeological evidence is pretty scant. It’s possible people used lead (even easier to melt and shape, and there is evidence of very early use of lead) more than copper before the Bronze Age.
I wonder if there’s research out there into the hottest temperature humanity can reach throughout history? So many things that advance technology depend on getting even hotter. With a simple wood fire, you can cook food to make it safer to eat and get more nutrients out of it. With a better design and fuel to get hotter, you can work copper, or glass, or steel. Hotter still and you can fuse atoms.
I know this isn’t the comparison being made, but I love the idea of jumping straight from swords to nukes. Writing prompt: a 16th century blacksmith suddenly realizes, “If I surround an unstable rock with a neutron reflecting earth metal, I can trigger a runaway chain reaction that’ll get that stump outta me yard.”
I was confused for a bit while watching the video so I watched all of it until the end. I only ended up more confused as time went on. What’s even worse is there’s no indication of what it’s from.
What always blows my mind to think about is how the materials for our advanced technology were here the whole time. We could have had computers and nuclear energy and spacecraft 20,000 years ago if we’d just had the knowledge.
I follow him too. People joke about him being a short way away from computers, but I think it’s a testament to just how far we’ve come as a species. Because even with the benefit of modern knowledge on the chemistry of the process, he’s kinda still stuck on figuring out how to scale out his iron production.
It also shows just how labor-intensive everything is without modern machinery, when it takes him several days of effort, from gathering and processing the raw materials, to making charcoal, building the kiln, and finally smelting the ore just to get a handful of pellets of pig iron.
Jokes aside, you’re right. Progress is never easy, fast, or guaranteed and we truly are standing on the shoulders of many, many non-giants and there is still so much work to do. It’s humbling and awesome to contemplate.
The copper age only lasted about 1000 years. Then came the bronze age. But the iron has been going on for longer than the bronze age and copper age combined.
so, caught an article on NPR where they were interviewing an archeologist who specialized in the Sea Peoples (and the bronze age collapse). In any case, there were some points he made that stuck with me. The most pointed being that, the collapse during the bronze age (for those that lived in it,) wouldn’t have known it was happening.
It was slow, happened across generations. while the climate change and other factors was inexorably moving to collapse… the changes weren’t fast enough for people to notice, it was just the way things were their entire life.
I believe bronze and iron weapons are equally powerful, but bronze is a mixture of copper and tin (requiring two types of input). Iron is more plentiful than tin, so militaries do not need large supplies of tin if they can manipulate iron. Steel, I believe, needs much higher temperatures and purified inputs.
If only I had some sort of mechanical machine that would lob this 300 kg nuclear bomb 90 m away at my enemy. One day science will catch up to man’s dreams, one day…
I had some 50 year old bartender try to be condescending with me saying i probably didn’t know how to use a dial phone. Showed her up by explaining my aunt used to have a Princess phone and had to explain that one to her
Damn, every time I think I’m original or clever today, someone beats me to it.
I was just thinking of “demon core on a warhammer/shield/trebuchet (not a catapult because that’s for plebs)”
Small point of pedantry, that is a flail, not a mace. A mace is mounted directly onto a handle, flails have the flexible material between the weight and the handle.
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