Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be clear, I'm not dismissing the research, which seems to be more about how they discovered it. I can understand if that was/is an open question, and these possible answers are pretty interesting. I was just wondering if there were competing theories here with reasons to doubt one is more likely than the other.
Many years ago, my roommate was working on his PhD in geology while my history obsession was in full bloom and we talked about this a little. He made some interesting points about iron versus copper supply and how its relative abundance meant that some cultures would have had access to iron long before access to copper. The transition to iron was very slow and some places kept using bronze for centuries. There’s also…
Re: A 3K-year-old copper smelting site could be key to understanding origins of iron
#81Interesting, thank you! I would have expected the higher melting point of iron to be a big hindrance compared to copper (and other metals), but hadn't considered the possibility of copper just not being locally present for some ancient cultures.