Been thinking about 1491, the book I wrote of here. Aught6 made a comment that brought an old question back to mind: WHY didn't any of the American Indians develop any metals technology beyond jewelry and decoration?
The craftsmanship in gold and silver and stone and pottery of many South & Central American nations was marvelous, but they didn't make use of iron that I've read of other than maybe an occasional meteorite hammered into something. In northern/northeast parts of North America were huge, rich deposits of iron and copper and other metals. One early explorer found iron outcrops that were essentially pure; break a piece off and it looked like refined iron inside, and there are copper deposits that were also of high grade. But they didn't develop the tech to use it.
Stone tools are not better except for not needing to be refined; a flint or obsidian blade can be incredibly sharp, but they're brittle, and while a well-made stone axe works pretty well, any decent iron or steel blade puts it to shame. These were intelligent, capable people, so how is it they never developed any real metals industry in the North? And Central & South no real tool or weapons use?
Yes, I know there were some pieces found in some places; that's not what I'm talking about. People who could refine gold and silver, and find ways to purify it, could have figured out iron, or copper and tin.
THE biggest trade good for the Europeans to the Indians was metal. Iron pots and pans, needles, axes and knives, flint strikers. The British shipped strikers alone over here by the keg and that was after the populations of many tribes had been chopped up by disease. If the Europeans had found a people with even a rudimentary iron industry, a number of things would've been different. And why, after exposure to iron and steel tools and seeing the blacksmiths working these metals, didn't anyone try working with those metals in the ground?
Steve Stirling wrote the Fifth Millenium series, much of it set in North America after a combination of war and natural disasters dumped the human race back to roughly late stone age/early iron age. People remembered/kept enough knowledge to keep some tech alive and it led to different developments. Think the Sioux tribes with compound bows('wheelbows') and armor and mounted lancers. Leave out the compound bows, and think of the early Europeans meeting tribes with iron and/or steel arrowheads and lance points and knives and axes and swords, and the armor that this would have led to... And once exposed to firearms, they'd have done the same thing the Japanese did; copy them, and quite possibly come up with improvements.
Makes me wish I was a better writer.
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