One hears about the iron age and the bronze age—eras in which people discovered metallurgy. But how did that happen? Was it like:
1. Look at rock
2. See shiny
3. Try to melt the shiny out of the rock
4. Profit?
Explain it to me!
In: 1643
There’s a step before the time you’ve imagined. There’s places where the metals one can find are so naturally pure that no metallurgy is required. For example, there’s a place on Lake Huron where the copper is pure enough that you can work it without any complex extraction.
It seems to me that step would be first. Then, once demand for metals spreads to where very pure raw materials are in short supply, that’s when you’d start experimenting with ways to make use of progressively inferior ore through more and more sophisticated refinement. But you’d start with the only slightly defective ore so you’d only need incremental advances in your refinement technology.
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