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Iron: From Mythical to Mundane
- iscrewyou 7y agoTo think if some of the ancient ones found out that humans have iron in their blood, they’d mercilessly kill entire civilizations “looking” for it.
- xkde 7y agoThis assumes that we’re somehow morally superior to those that have gone before us.
- JadeNB 7y agoNo it doesn't …? It just says that nowadays we are less consciously entranced by iron and can more easily get our hands on it, so we don't need to kill people for the comparatively minuscule amount in their blood.
- xkde 7y ago> so we don't need to kill people for the comparatively minuscule amount in their blood You’re sure that’s what would have happened then?
- JadeNB 7y agoNo, I'm not iscrewyou (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21349665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21349665). I doubt that I buy that it would happen, but I think that saying it would is just being mistaken, not engaging in some sort of claim to moral superiority.
- xkde 7y agoI agree in that it is probably largely just a case of being mistaken. However, comments like that often carry an implicit, “those horrible ancient civilizations” context embedded within them. There’s an idea that knowledge (science, economics, technology, etc) and morality are intrinsically linked when in fact, they’re orthogonal.
- iscrewyou 7y agoBecause I didn’t mention “those great ancient civilizations” doesn’t imply that I mean the opposite. Any history book will show you the atrocities committed by humans against each other for false reasons that today we say to “how could they?” I was simply engaging in a philosophical question of what if.
- crpatino 7y agoIf I may... > Any history book will show you... And any newspaper will show you the atrocities committed by contemporary humans against each other, for false reasons that out forefathers would have said "how could they [not learn a single damn thing we taught them]?" The fact that we do not share their biases do not make our behavior any better, nor our excuses any less petty, dumb or self-serving. And rest asured that our descendants will judge us just as harshly as we judge today those that came before us. Such is human nature.
- crpatino 7y agoAnyone trying to extract tangible amounts of iron from hemoglobine is an utter imbecile. It cannot be done now with modern technology and fossil fuels (after all, we do not see abattoirs selling their blood by-products to the steel industry), much less under the restrictions of a pre-industrial society. Contrary to the GP opinion, ancient people were not dumber than dirt. Any ruler stupid enough to try anything like that on the scale suggested would not remain a ruler for long. People would revolt, oportunistic leutenants would organize a coup, neighbouring rules would seize the chance and invade. But more importantly, the ruler thenselve would refrain from pursuing this atrocity. The fact that he was a ruler would imply a modicum of competence. Even if he was amoral enough to try, he would stop trying after the first thousand murders turned barely enough iron to cast a hatchet. After all, the tributes that village would have produced during the first year alone would be overwhelmly more valuable.
- simonh 7y agoIron is extremely common, it's found all over the place in useful quantities. But anyway people in history, in general, weren't complete gibbering idiots.
- iscrewyou 7y ago> people in history, in general, weren't complete gibbering idiots. I disagree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan
- LyndsySimon 7y agoKhan wasn’t an idiot, he was ruthless. That’s a very different thing. Likewise, the Holocaust is an interesting topic to study - how exactly did the Nazis murder millions while maintaining at least formal deniability? Would the same even be possible today, with our communications technology? My immediate reaction is “no”, but then I remember that there were people escaping from occupied territory with first-hand accounts of the atrocities being committed, and it was still far from common knowledge. I don’t believe for a moment that every German who claimed ignorance of the extermination camps was doing so earnestly, but every American I’ve spoken with that lived through WW2 said that there wasn’t really any mention of the camps until Western Allies started liberating them. Even when the Soviets started encountering them, the media treated them as rumor. I strongly suspect that today, the same thing could happen and that people who reported on it and tried to investigate/document it would be seen as part of the “conspiracy fringe” in one form or another. Indeed, it may be happening, in China, with the Uighurs and other groups. The fact that I don’t really know how much weight to give reports from there gives me pause, and I consider myself fairly well-informed. Certainly better informed than the average “man on the street”, if only because politics is an interest of mine.
- simonh 7y agoIn general. And three of those four were done by people who knew perfectly well what they were doing and why, and their actions while despicable, were entirely rational in service of their goals.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoThere are all these stories like Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court where someone goes back in time. If someone went back in time with sword and armor made using modern metallurgy, would they be considered magical? The armor would likely be lighter and more maneuverable while still providing protection. The sword would likely be lighter, sharper, and more durable. Just an interesting thought experiment.
- henrikschroder 7y agoI always thought it's a fascinating idea to see if you could make something using modern metallurgy that looks identical to medieval arms and armour, but has much better properties. So kevlar is out, but how would modern steel fare? Tungsten? Titanium?
- nostromo 7y agoI enjoyed this story of a family that was disconnected from society for 40 years, from 1938 to 1978. When found, the technology that most amazed them was... plastic! > "Lord, what have they thought up — it is glass, but it crumples!" The family also noticed "moving stars" (which were of course satellites) starting in the 1950s. > The Lykovs had noticed them as early as the 1950s, when “the stars began to go quickly across the sky,” and Karp himself conceived a theory to explain this: “People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very like stars.” It's a fun read. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-rus...
- swayvil 7y agoIt's funny. The ancient iron-smiths. They devised dozens of techniques for making iron harder and tougher. But they didn't know "how it works". But now we know how it works. That is to say, we have a nice body of thought that describes what we observe going on there. Good thoughts. Useful thoughts. But how does that work, with thoughts describing observations? I dunno. Maybe we're like the ancient iron-smiths, except with thoughts. Thought smiths.
- standardUser 7y agoReminds me of Damascus steel, which we still can't recreate with complete accuracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel
- fallous 7y agoI'm unconvinced that metal smiths of the iron/steel age did not "understand how it worked." That certain smiths and geographic regions produced consistently high grades of steel suggests they did have an understanding, albeit it an understanding grounded in a world model that differs substantially from our own modern framework. If, for example, an alchemical world view sufficed to describe and predict the results of forging a particular metal or alloy then it was sufficient for understanding within the constraints of what was needed. Plenty of modern bladesmiths have no deeper understanding of metallurgy than "this is good for X, this other is not according to experts or experience." Aristotelian physics was sufficient in the time and geographic area in which he operated (friction as primary) but was insufficient in a larger domain compared to Newtonian physics (force has primacy). Both served to bring us to and through the industrial age, but then the domain expanded and quantum physics was needed. Don't discount the genius of our ancestors regardless of archeological age. We may feel smugly superior playing with our tools of the silicon age but get magically transported to the stone age naked and with no access to external knowledge and try and achieve in the basics of food, clothing, and shelter... let alone tools such as hand axes, skinning knives, arrow and spear points, etc.
- Rapzid 7y agoBroscience that happens to produce results is still broscience.
- taneq 7y ago> If, for example, an alchemical world view sufficed to describe and predict the results of forging a particular metal or alloy then it was sufficient for understanding within the constraints of what was needed. I strongly doubt alchemy predicted any significant aspects of steelmaking. All alchemical reasoning that I've seen has either been post-hoc trying to explain an observation, or has been quaintly incorrect (see the typical description of how to produce a basilisk, for example).
- simonh 7y agoThe point is these techniques were determined by trial and error, they never understood the reasons why one technique worked and another didn't.
- Sniffnoy 7y ago> It can also be coated with other materials: a thin sheet of steel coated with an even thinner layer of tin makes the light, sturdy, and non-corrosive tin cans that now hold much of our food. Are tin cans still used? I was under the impression they'd been replaced by aluminum...
- mrob 7y agoHere in the UK, most food cans are steel. I checked several with a magnet, and the only ones that didn't stick were sardine cans. All the cylindrical food cans stuck. But canned drinks are usually aluminum.
- Aloha 7y agoMost food cans are Steel in the United States.
- simonh 7y agoAluminium (sorry, Brit) is lighter than steel but more expensive, so food cans are usually steel because the contents are fairly heavy anyway. Drinks cans are smaller with a lighter contents weight, and are often held in the hand while drunk so weight is a bigger issue.
- sunstone 7y agoSo, the battery age is about where the iron age was 200 years ago.