How did ancient civilizations make ovens so hot that they could melt metal without the kinds on materials we have today?
In: Engineering
Clay and stone are *really* hard to melt. Copper, tin, bronze, iron, gold, and silver (common primitive metals) don’t have the highest melting points compared to other metals, and some melt at rather low temperatures (relatively speaking). Take a fire in a carefully shaped furnace made of clay, blow in a significant amount of oxygen (you can make a good bellow fan with a few sticks, some thread, some bark, and more clay), and you can make a furnace that gets hot enough to melt metal.
It’s really not all that hard. Finding the material’s actually harder, but we did that too.
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