Do we have any sort of reference on the revelations that lead to cultures figuring out how to manufacture steel?
Obviously it's going to be different people and events across different cultures, many different people/instances within some I imagine, but I need to know more about the process of the progress of steel; specifically across western Europe and/or the Middle East, as well as any relevant metallurgy that could've been going on in northern Africa; Egypt and elsewhere.
The more obtuse question is: how long and how far could a hypothetical society go with modest access to iron ore, which they've been making into rudimentary tools and weapons, before they figure out steel? Like, what sorts of environments do you need to have to make it so that they've got all the iron they need, though not an abundance, but they don't figure out steel. Or, at least hey don't understand steel. They may have practices that they think are making the iron stronger, and it is, but not for the reasons they think it is.
That, however, is something I can easily address on my own for my purposes if I had a better understanding of the sorts of processes and revelations that steel came from. To my understanding a society with regular access to iron generally figures out some sort of steeling process within that same millennium.
>>1109802
They figured out steel as soon as they figured out Iron. There was no steel age, all iron was steel.
Steel is simply iron with carbon, which happened in all pre modern furnaces because of the charcoal they used. However i guess it would have been the Celts and Romans who truly figured out the right amount of carbon needed to make good quality steel.
>>1109802
Copper in pure form is quite abundant in some areas and could just be grabbed and cold hammered into shape. At some point folks figured out said metal is also found in ores in mines and such. After figuring out that tin mixed with copper gives a good metal you're officially bronze age, or when you import bronze depending on your view of history.
As for steel/iron >>1109810 is spot on.
Here is a more in depth explanation about iron/steel which also covers Japanese shit.
>>1109842
>>1109843
>>1109932
I think he meant that 0% carbon iron was not really made but IIRC everything under 0.4% is called wrought iron anyways despite carbon and slag inclusions.
>>1109972
mostly
Anything in the 0.5-2% -ish range of carbon content is some type of steel, below like 0.4 and around 2.5 or higher you're talking about some sort of iron.
>>1109972
- let me add: to that end, for all intents and purposes steel is just a specific kind of iron, yes, but not all iron is a kind of steel. It's like rectangles and squares.
bumping with some iron while i read the whole screencap
making iron requires far more advanced metallurgy than making low-quality steel
>>1109802
There is a prehistory to the use of iron. Back into the 5th millenium BCE there is evidence of manipulated meteoric iron. It was a hot commodity in the early and middle bronze ages, before iron smelting techniques were developed toward the late bronze age. I remember reading a really interesting article on the appearances of iron in the Iliad. In the oldest strata of the poem (e.g. book XXIII), it is regarded as a super luxuriant commodity, whereas in the newer strata, iron is run of the mill.
For example, a meteoric iron dagger was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
So the manipulation and use of steel did not necessarily begin with iron smelting. But it was perfected through that - particularly on Cyprus, from where it seems to spread out, developing regional variations as early as the 12th century BCE.
