WI No Iron Age?

[rewster]

I realize there are many theories for the end of the bronze age and start of the iron age, but for the sake of discussion, let's use the theory that it was caused by a disruption in the tin trade.
Now, what if that disruption never happened? Whether it was the eruption of Thera or an invasion of Britain in the 1200s BC, isn't important.

Would iron have become common anyway, or would the superiority of bronze hold out for a much longer time before steel was developed? And would steel ever be developed? If not, would other metals and alloys be more prominent today? Could we have bronze, aluminum, or titanium based skyscrapers?

How much of this depends on the relative abundance of iron and copper? Obviously iron is more abundant... would copper sources have been exhausted?

 

[carlton_bach]

Copper sources would not have been exhausted until well into the industrial revolution (assuming there was such a thing). There is enough copper on earth for pretty much all our needs. The problem is that there also much, much more iron on earth than we could ever need, so it is literally dirt cheap. Without a disruption in the bronze inflow, bronze would likely last longer in main use, but iron, once discovered, will almost immediately become popular. This is especially true in the northern European communities. Imagine, there is a metal that you don't have to buy. You can just set up a clay oven, stockpile charcoal, dig up some specific kind of earth in the nearest bog, and you have iron. It's a time investment of 3-5 days for a modern metalsmith trained in the ancient techniques, and it can be done almost eerywhere in NW Europe. The only material you have to purchase is the charcoal (and that can usually be manufactured locally, even by the smith himself if he invests another 1-2 man-days and plans long-term). A village community with a single skilled man dedicating a large part of his time to this can keep itself armed and equipped with iron tools without requiring any trade goods. Iron would also be much cheaper than bronze, even as a trade good.


Edit: where does the trade disruption theorey stem from? I recall we were taught the iron age arose because bog/surface iron was discovered as a cheap, plentiful substitute for the qualitatively superior bronze and was eventually developed to the point where it became qualitatively superior, too, around the 10th/9th century BC.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

I realize there are many theories for the end of the bronze age and start of the iron age, but for the sake of discussion, let's use the theory that it was caused by a disruption in the tin trade.
Now, what if that disruption never happened? Whether it was the eruption of Thera or an invasion of Britain in the 1200s BC, isn't important.

Would iron have become common anyway, or would the superiority of bronze hold out for a much longer time before steel was developed? And would steel ever be developed? If not, would other metals and alloys be more prominent today? Could we have bronze, aluminum, or titanium based skyscrapers?
How much of this depends on the relative abundance of iron and copper? Obviously iron is more abundant... would copper sources have been exhausted?

Neither bronze nor aluminum is strong enough for use as a building material in any building not more easily made with wood or stone. Titanium is difficult to extract from its ores, not being purified until 1910 and not being produced commercially until 1946.

Skyscrapers were not produced until after the Bessemer process made steel available in large enough quantities to make tall buildings, before that the tallest buildings were limited by the strength of stone vs its weight to about 11 stories, and these needed walls over 18 feet thick at the bottom.

 

[carlton_bach]

Skyscrapers were not produced until after the Bessemer process made steel available in large enough quantities to make tall buildings, before that the tallest buildings were limited by the strength of stone vs its weight to about 11 stories, and these needed walls over 18 feet thick at the bottom.

Minor nitpick, while skyscrapers depewnded on Bessemer steel (and, perhaps more importantly, electric elevators) tp be viable, you can build very much higher than 11 stories in stone if you know what you are doing. Romanesque tower construction reached as high as 50 and Gothic well over 100 metres without requiring such vast 'footprints'. It isn't a very good architecture to maximise living space, though, and it's certainly finicky to build.

 

[rewster]

Edit: where does the trade disruption theorey stem from? I recall we were taught the iron age arose because bog/surface iron was discovered as a cheap, plentiful substitute for the qualitatively superior bronze and was eventually developed to the point where it became qualitatively superior, too, around the 10th/9th century BC.

Look up Bronze in wikipedia, and it's referenced there in the history section, but for more detail, check this paper out.

 

[rewster]

Neither bronze nor aluminum is strong enough for use as a building material in any building not more easily made with wood or stone. Titanium is difficult to extract from its ores, not being purified until 1910 and not being produced commercially until 1946.

Skyscrapers were not produced until after the Bessemer process made steel available in large enough quantities to make tall buildings, before that the tallest buildings were limited by the strength of stone vs its weight to about 11 stories, and these needed walls over 18 feet thick at the bottom.

I realize that typical bronze is not as strong as steel. However, certain alloys are quite strong, notably beryllium bronze. I read somewhere that it is three times the strength of structural steel.
I'm not sure about the viability of beryllium bronze, since beryllium was not isolated until 1828... but in such an ATL, butterflies might make it happen sooner. Though, 1828 is early enough for skyscrapers to happen around the same time as they did OTL.
Phosphor bronze is supposed to be pretty strong as well, though I've seen no claims that it could compete with steel.

Titanium and aluminum were thrown in for good measure, though I wouldn't expect them to be any more prevalent in an ATL than in OTL due to the difficulties of extraction, as you point out.

Obviously iron was known and used before the end of the bronze age, so it would have still been used... but is it not possible that iron could be relegated to cheap items like pots and kettles, while bronze is used for pretty much everything else?

 

[Thande]

I'm not sure about this. Remember that the Pharoahs thought iron was more valuable than gold before ironworking was discovered. Iron knives were buried in tombs as a sign of riches. Even if tin remained plentiful I have a hard time believing that iron wouldn't catch on eventually.

 

[jolo]

Afaik, the first pieces of iron being used were iron rich meteorite fragments, which, with lots of effort (hard to melt iron at the time) were shaped according to need. I suppose some of those meteors were pretty pure, and therefore also very durable.

Only when a more widespread metal industry developed, mostly based around silver, gold, brass, and bronce, did hot enough furnaces come about to melt iron.

Even then, it took some time before people realized they could get iron from certain ores. I suppose they experimented with add-ons and found that some of them increased the amount of iron, but that's speculation.

Interestingly, the Chinese managed to produce steel shortly after understanding iron melting, while Europe needed until shortly before the industrial revolution, iirc...

All this are developments which are nearly unavoidable, considering a certain level of intelligence and enough people contributing to it. I suppose to avoid an iron age, we have to get rid of nearly all metal crafting. One possibility would be to have a process being invented to produce hard to break glass. If blades, spear tips, and so on could be produced in a process nearly as easy as producing pottery, metal crafting might be limited to producing jewellery, and jewellery is one area where iron is not the most valuable.

We could also have an industrial revolution as easily. Though without skyscrapers...

 

[MarkA]

Afaik, the first pieces of iron being used were iron rich meteorite fragments, which, with lots of effort (hard to melt iron at the time) were shaped according to need. I suppose some of those meteors were pretty pure, and therefore also very durable.

Only when a more widespread metal industry developed, mostly based around silver, gold, brass, and bronce, did hot enough furnaces come about to melt iron.

Even then, it took some time before people realized they could get iron from certain ores. I suppose they experimented with add-ons and found that some of them increased the amount of iron, but that's speculation.

Interestingly, the Chinese managed to produce steel shortly after understanding iron melting, while Europe needed until shortly before the industrial revolution, iirc...

All this are developments which are nearly unavoidable, considering a certain level of intelligence and enough people contributing to it. I suppose to avoid an iron age, we have to get rid of nearly all metal crafting. One possibility would be to have a process being invented to produce hard to break glass. If blades, spear tips, and so on could be produced in a process nearly as easy as producing pottery, metal crafting might be limited to producing jewellery, and jewellery is one area where iron is not the most valuable.

We could also have an industrial revolution as easily. Though without skyscrapers...

Steel was produced much earlier than this in the west. Damascus steel comes to mind immediately. Of course it is likely that many weapons were steel, especially the ones made for the aristocratic, military castes of Greece and Rome rather than the mass produced ones for the rank and file.

 

[jolo]

Steel was produced much earlier than this in the west. Damascus steel comes to mind immediately. Of course it is likely that many weapons were steel, especially the ones made for the aristocratic, military castes of Greece and Rome rather than the mass produced ones for the rank and file.

Do you have any sources? I'm not sure at what time damascenes were introduced, but I believe the steel for it came from India. Rome and Greece sound even more unlikely to me, especially if you mean the classic civs.

 

[rewster]

Afaik, the first pieces of iron being used were iron rich meteorite fragments, which, with lots of effort (hard to melt iron at the time) were shaped according to need. I suppose some of those meteors were pretty pure, and therefore also very durable.

Only when a more widespread metal industry developed, mostly based around silver, gold, brass, and bronce, did hot enough furnaces come about to melt iron.

Even then, it took some time before people realized they could get iron from certain ores. I suppose they experimented with add-ons and found that some of them increased the amount of iron, but that's speculation.

Interestingly, the Chinese managed to produce steel shortly after understanding iron melting, while Europe needed until shortly before the industrial revolution, iirc...

All this are developments which are nearly unavoidable, considering a certain level of intelligence and enough people contributing to it. I suppose to avoid an iron age, we have to get rid of nearly all metal crafting. One possibility would be to have a process being invented to produce hard to break glass. If blades, spear tips, and so on could be produced in a process nearly as easy as producing pottery, metal crafting might be limited to producing jewellery, and jewellery is one area where iron is not the most valuable.

We could also have an industrial revolution as easily. Though without skyscrapers...

Ok sure, iron working as a development is unavoidable. In fact it happened well before the end of the bronze age. But is an actual "Iron Age" something that is inevitable, or is it possible that iron could have been marginalized, due to its relative inferority to bronze, in an ATL where there is never a tin shortage... thus allowing bronze to stay in the forefront, and new, high strength alloys developed (possibly ones we don't even know of today... new industrial alloys are developed rather frequently) which supersede steel before steel ever becomes common?

 

[Gladi]

Do you have any sources? I'm not sure at what time damascenes were introduced, but I believe the steel for it came from India. Rome and Greece sound even more unlikely to me, especially if you mean the classic civs.

Bright day
I think Roman steel was accident of furnace design which allowed for carbon from charcoal to mix with iron. Or something like that. Similar how English happened upon limestone by accident.

 

[carlton_bach]

You can harden iron by deliberately placing it in the glowing coals to absorb carbon. There is, of course, a trick to it, but it's a fairly natural thing to do if you#re forging, so it was probably discovered early. Of course o7ur modern distinction of 'iron' and 'Steel' was not understood, so this was thought of as particularly hard irton. WE know from studies of archeological finds that Roman and medieval swords could reach the hardness of modern mild and knife steels, and many were quite sophisticated mixes of hardened and soft metals to create both flexibility and edge. Junkelmann lists data on Roman blades in his 'Reiter Roms', unfportunately as yet untranslated.