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Posted on 09/30/2025 6:09:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
In a fascinating twist of ancient chemistry, copper-smelting artisans may have stumbled upon a technique that would eventually lead to the intentional extraction of iron from ore, a discovery that was both accidental and revolutionary.
A fresh analysis of slag, ores, and furnace residues from the 3,000-year-old site of Kvemo Bolnisi, Georgia, is rewriting the story of how humankind first learned to make iron.
A team of researchers from Cranfield University in England, reexamining old finds from Kvemo Bolnisi using modern techniques, suggests that what had once been labeled an early iron-smelting site was actually a copper workshop that utilized iron oxides as a flux...
The site at Kvemo Bolnisi was first excavated during the 1960s. Early archaeologists recorded significant stockpiles of hematite (an iron oxide) alongside smelting slags, which led them to conclude that this workshop had been an early iron smelter...
By studying the microstructure of the slag and residual phases, the researchers demonstrate that the iron oxides behaved as a "flux," a substance added to the smelting mix to help separate impurities and improve copper yield, rather than forming new iron metal.
In effect, the smelters were tinkering with iron-bearing minerals to optimize their copper output. However, that level of experimentation suggests a sophistication that may have seeded the later invention of iron smelting proper...
Instead of seeing copper and iron technologies as being sequential, the Cranfield study weaves them together. In that sense, the Iron Age might owe a kind of accidental debt to copper artisans who were seeking better yields, rather than a new metal.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedebrief.org ...
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It’s also very possible iron smelting and working was independently discovered by different groups at different times who were all familiar with copper and bronze smelting and may have accidentally discovered iron smelting while using it as a flux for their copper smelting. I think the key was learning how to make kilns that were hot enough to work iron.
“Iron laying all over the ground in parts of North America. Injuns must not have been interested.”
Why? It wasn’t practical for them. There is a whole lot of time and work that goes into smelting metal. Why when they could just reach down pick up a stone and knap out a point in 15 minutes. They lost half of their arrows and points anyhow. Much more practical to replace lost stone points than metal points.
We still use stone because of it’s superior sharpness... It is 100 times sharper than metal.
https://record.umich.edu/articles/surgeons-use-stone-age-technology-for-delicate-surgery/
Silly Europeans and their metal....
The trade routes they have worked out for those days are amazing,but different tribes may have tried to hold onto technological secrets.
Judges 1:19
And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.
<img src=”https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTYvhD1wsdX8A0gp_Vp6p7KK7-sZ9moprr8-feqMlMYMg&s=10” width =700
🍴
It’s largely mythical, based on a very reasonable sounding idea — that copper replaced stone because it was better (and it probably ain’t for a lot of common uses of in prehistoric antiquity), that bronze was better than copper, that iron was found to be better than bronze, just so just so just so.
IMHO it’s goofy to use these as a date for anything, because it isn’t a real date at all. Some cultures were still using stone tools (the Americas were chock full of that) and didn’t develop bronze until at least a thousand years after its tool use declined in the “Old World”.
In any case, it’s better to use actual dates and date estimates based on the radiometric tools developed in the last 70-80 years. Back when these ‘ages’ were posited, there was stratigraphy and not much of anything else. Even dendrochronology antedates radiometic dating, but clearly using radiocarbon dating on individual tree rings helps calibrate the dates.
-suggests that what had once been labeled an early iron-smelting site was actually a copper workshop that utilized iron oxides as a flux-
First flux capacitor. Maybe where Doc got the idea. ;-)
😁
btw, there were some apparent hooks left in the two sequels that could work out for something like that.
Define “a 100 times sharper…”. I’m curious to hear that description.
https://record.umich.edu/articles/surgeons-use-stone-age-technology-for-delicate-surgery/
https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/health/surgery-scalpels-obsidian
https://abavistwellness.com/obsidian-scalpel-blade-vs-steel-scalpel-blade/
They were too busy killing each other...................
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