I think the scale of wood production and iron production is very much demonstrated by the romans. This guys series goes over medieval metal production and He ha

I think the scale of wood production and iron production is very much demonstrated by the romans. This guys series goes over medieval metal production and He has sources with entire cities (Elba) in Rome produced iron ore in the range of 10 million ton of iron ore per year. They wouldn't be mining it unless they could use it and even if they only recovered 1%of the ore into iron they are still ending up with 100,000 tons of iron a year which is significant. We should underestimate human engineering just because we picked a certain technology path. scroll to article 1 yourself https://acoup.blog/2020/11/06/collections-iron-how-did-they-make-it-addendum-crucible-steel-and-cast-iron/ https://acoup.blog/2020/11/06/collections-iron-how-did-they-...