A modern graphite pencil is indeed something of a miracle, and needs some civilization to support its construction. Interestingly, fabricating other writing an

A modern graphite pencil is indeed something of a miracle, and needs some civilization to support its construction. Interestingly, fabricating other writing and drawing implements requires less-than-iron-age sophistication. Charcoal, referenced in the article and used prior to graphite for many/most artistic drawings, is considerably easier to make than steel swords or graphite pencils, and has been used for drawing since the Paleolithic (and still is). Ink made from a suspension of carbon particles is only slightly less crude (needs an aqueous binder). If you were an artist thrown into pre- or post-civilization Earth and lacked a stash of graphite pencils (but could make fire), baking some vine sticks in a small stone oven for a few hours would enable you to write or draw... if you could find something to draw on. Back to the original article -- what I found most interesting was that my intuition about the complexity of making iron (to say nothing of steel) was way off. Some things, like charcoal, ink, and even oil paint require surprisingly small operations to fabricate[1]. I incorrectly assumed iron was in that category. [1] Watrous, "The Craft of Old Master Drawings" https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/1945.htm https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/1945.htm has a good discussion of how traditional drawing media were created.