How did mankind discover metal?
In: Technology
Before we were making iron and steel we were working copper and tin.
These are notable because they melt at temperatures you could achieve by accident in a bonfire.
While it happened long before recorded history so it’s hard to say for certain, metalworking was almost certainly discovered by accident when someone noticed that one of their fire rocks had melted into a lustrous puddle of molten tin.
Then it’s all trial and error – what other rocks can I melt? What if I make the fire bigger and hotter? What if I mix melted tin and melted copper?
Some metal is just sitting there on the surface of the Earth. Some copper and gold can be pretty close to the pure metal, but it’s usually mixed in with rock to form an ore. Even so, this ore is still obviously different from other stones and dirt. It’s the type of thing you’d notice when your livelihood depends on stone tools. It’s not clear how or why people first started to put metals and ores in fire, but it could have been related to cooking or other methods of tool-making. Either way, once you do that, you’re smelting, and the resulting product can be molded or hammered into useful shapes.
The first metals worked by humans were tin and copper, which occur naturally in rocks on the surface and critically will melt in temperatures producible in a bonfire.
Humans were probably already producing ceramics by then, heating clay in hot fires to make hardened pots.
It probably happened by accident, a couple of these rocks got into a particularly hot bonfire while making ceramic pots and while picking through the ashes someone noticed that one of the rocks had melted.
Through some basic experimentation, and creation of a ceramic or sand mold they were able to produce the first copper tools.
Bronze is a mixture of tin and copper, which was also probably discovered by accident.
You start by having fires. Then you start putting circles of rocks around the fire to help with containment. Then you notice that occasionally some little shiny bits melt out from those rocks (copper and tin) and harden on the ground later after the fire is done.
So you start to collect it, and eventually collect enough to start using it for tools. Then you start actively seeking it out. You start by just looking for surface rocks, but then you start to go into caves and find them. Eventually, you might even see it in the cave walls and start trying to break it out of the walls.
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Humans have been around for a LONG time. When we learned to make fire, we’d encircle it with rocks. Some rocks would have a vein of copper or tin ore in it. The next day you’d look at the fire and see this weird bit of melted metal that wasn’t there before.
Then just sort of playing around and harnessing it and trying to replicate it.
I remember reading a theory that king solomon’s mines was really just an area where there was a copper vein but it was essentially exposed to the surface. So functionally a mine you didn’t have to do any real digging for.
So find an area with a ton of copper, setup camp and make a shitload of arrow heads, knives, axes, what the fuck else are you gonna do you’re a caveman. Then you’ve got a bunch of nifty shit to trade.
Not exactly better than rock, but once rock breaks it’s essentially done. Copper could at least be reformed after the fact.
Well, back in 1951, Willie Kizart found that if he poked a hole in his amp, he could make his guitar sound fuzzy.
And people mucked around with this idea, seeing what sounds they could create for awhile.
Then a few years later, in 1960, a faulty output transformer in a tube amp blew during a Marty Robbins recording session and made the guitar sound cool as fuck.
So engineer Glenn Snoddy set about setting up a box that could reproduce the sound on demand and invented the first stomp box.
And with this stomp box, the first chunky riffs were written and metal was born.
In the late 60’s, Birmingham guitarist and sheet-metal factory worker Tony Iommi accidentally chopped off the tips of two fingers in a pneumatic press – on his final day of work, no less. Music being his true passion, he fashioned thimbles to wear as a prosthetic, and tuned his guitar lower so it was easier to play. This resulted in a sound that was darker and “harder” than what was typically expected from rock guitarists of the day.
Tony’s idiosyncratic, tritone-oriented riffs, combined with rapid advancements in amplification technology and bandmates of comparable skill and ingenuity, resulted in a new sound that was “harder than rock.” This nexus represents, arguably, our discovery of Metal.
In determining the origins of mankind’s relationship with Metal, most scientists argue in favor of the Sabbath Hypothesis, cementing its status as the current leading theory in the field.
Well, first we did a few sick bends on the guitar, then we brought the drums in, and the bassist kind of just followed the lead. Soon enough, we had enough people to start a mosh pit, and the rest is history.
/S
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