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
It took thousands of years, and we started with rocks with relatively low melting points which were therefore easier to refine and manipulate.
It’s easy enough to imagine an ancient people stumbling upon a vein of copper. It’s relatively pure in its natural form and eye-catching.
From there it’s just a matter of discovering that it can be bent and reformed (easy enough when you can bend it with your hands or dent it with a rock), then discovering that heating it makes this easier.
It took literally thousands of years to go from low melting points metals like copper and tin to high melting points metals like iron.
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