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Iron was more expensive than gold at the dawn of the iron age. The only way humans obtained iron was from meteorites.
by intrasight 9y ago
Iron was more expensive than gold at the dawn of the iron age. The only way humans obtained iron was from meteorites.
- peatmoss 9y agoThis is so incredibly badass. I mean, just imagine that the only practicable place to get this new, incredibly strong material, was from space. On the topic of found vs made materials: I’ve read that shipwrecks are getting mined as a source of steel because it’s more or less impossible to make new steel that isn’t contaminated by trace amounts of radiation from 20th century nuclear testing. While not a problem for skyscrapers, certain lab equipment requires the relatively more rare variety of found steel.
- hdkrgr 9y agoMore on the latter point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel The same effect was also used in understanding brain development by looking at Carbon isotopes in brains of people born before WW2 to determine which cells were formed when.
- LMYahooTFY 9y agoThat's fascinating to me, I didn't realize anthropogenic radiation levels were significant enough to offer a control for molecular examination of human brains in the general population. It's almost a bit unnerving.
- jacobolus 9y agoIt’s not “radiation levels” per se. Nuclear bomb testing in the mid 20th century dramatically increased the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, which has subsequently been gradually declining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Origin
- intrasight 9y agoYeah, I recall reading that a couple years ago. Indeed a fascinating topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
- badosu 9y agoI don't understand this statement, they could not mine iron ores but could gold ones?
- wbl 9y agoMining the ore isn't the problem. Extraction is. Gold is native gold, so easy to seperate. Iron requires clever furnaces and processing to produce, and it's not until recently we could make mild steel consistently.
- sampo 9y agoIron extraction is not very high tech after one has the know-how. But it took time to develop the knowledge. https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/forge-blower/ https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/forge-b...
- kragen 9y agoOn a more-than-proof-of-concept scale, you have https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ, a traditional blacksmith family in Burkina Faso mining a few kilograms of iron with several person-days of work, which is probably about 1000× as productive as the Primitive Technology guy achieved (perhaps a gram of iron after about a person-day of work). But the US steel industry employs 87000 people to produce about 120 million tonnes of iron and steel per year, which works out to about 5000 kg of iron and steel per person-day. (And that's why Burkina Faso imports its iron instead of smelting it in the way demonstrated in that documentary, the way they had done for the previous 2500 years, until some French guys wrecked a Jeep there in the early 20th century.) So there are something like six or seven orders of magnitude over which "high-tech" machinery can increase your iron productivity, or, to look at it another way, over which the price of iron can vary even once you have the know-how.
- badosu 9y agoThanks for sharing, this is a really great documentary!
- intrasight 9y agoAnd FYI where I just heard that this week was in "The Podcast History of Our World", which is totally awesome. In one of the three "The New Kingdom" episodes.
- JBlue42 9y agoSounds interesting. Thanks!