Eli5 how was steel made/melted in ancient times? Coal wasn’t everywhere, was it?
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Steel isn’t really an “ancient” invention – in fact the widespread use of steel kinda separates “ancient” people from modernish, hence names like Bronze Age.
But we do see steel as early as 1800 BC, and some civilizations as early as 400 BC produce a good bit of it.
It’s important to remember that at this point humans have made metal tools and weapons for thousands of years, and they’ve learned a lot, and a lot of the copper, bronze, and raw iron techniques transfer over.
But as others explained, they would collect some form of ore – mined, or from bacteria, or clay, or oxide deposits, and put that in a special furnace usually made of clay or kiln fired bricks. And then use plain charcoal, in large quantities to smelt the iron.
Once you have some slag and cast iron, you have to refine it. And a modern style finery forge wouldn’t be invented until 1800 AD. So that meant lots of heating, reheating, and beating it to work out impurities and oxidize carbon off the iron until you had something approaching a steel.
If you want to see some of these basic processes from scratch, check out the Primitive Technology YouTube channel. Make sure you turn on Closed Captions. Good luck!
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