Why did it take them so long to realize how silly bronze swords and bronze shields and bronze armor looked before...

this is true, most officers in the roman army would have had bronze weapons

i'm more aghast at those ludicrously impractical shields with huge gaping openings in them for "muh aesthetics"

Low bait

>Slly bronze swords and bronze shields and bronze armor looked before moving on to iron?

What type of swords looked silly to you exactly?

Naue II?
Leaf shaped swords?
Kopesh?

They adopted many different types of swords depending on the time and civilization

Same thing with the armor that could be Urnfield cuirass during the late bronze age, Dendra type in Greece during the middle bronze age or even leather in some cases

They had many different types of shields too, Minoan and Myceneans used mainly those large shields during the middle bronze age but around the late bronze age they adopt new shapes like the circular one which was used by the Philistines and Sards

This is fucking lovely. Bring Bronze Age aesthethics back.

Bronze is technically easier to make, it requires lower temperatures and can be cast, cold working improves its qualities. only downside, you need tin and copper, the former is hard to find and has to be traded over long distances.

Iron ore can be found most everywhere, but it is harder to work with, you need a bloomery, bellows, lots of coal, just to make bloomery iron. to turn this into something usable you need lots more coal and hot work, you need to be able to forge weld and master some other techniques too. In general Iron is harder to produce.

If you like an insight on how primitive iron making might have looked, here is a good video from Africa: youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ
it may looks primitive, but the guys produce a pretty decent sized bloom from dirt.

I agree

Moar........ MAHW!

Ok

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They almost have the full cow armor set
>diablo 2 nostalgia

We Bronze Age thread nao.

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Cow equipment is the strongest.

this

iron was just another junk metal like lead to the bronze age societies and it wasn't until metallurgical techniques improved to the point where it allowed them to work iron that they were able to get the same effects that they got out of bronze but with a far more plentiful mineral.

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>iron
>not some primitive form of steel
Pure iron is a disgrace to work with and have limited uses. It's brittle and it corrodes easily. Maybe what they called iron and was useful was just some type of steel.

Was that guy tanned or this is another episode of We wuz ancients n' shiet?

Weren't the Nubians and people from the Ethiopia era fairly up-to-date until the 1400s era?

>It's you! Bronze Age Man!

>Cretans were not tanned

I don't know, it might have something to do with the fact that they lived in the Southernmost point of Europe at the same Latitude of Tunisia, and were also renowned sailors so constantly exposed to direct sunligjt and finally it's how they depcited themselves and how Egyptians depcited them too

C'mon the only wewuz is you here

Bronze looks so aesthetic compared to boring grey iron and steel.

say what?

is it not the other way around?

bronce fags btfo!

>finally it's how they depcited themselves and how Egyptians depcited them too

The Minoans almost certainly learned how to paint from Egypt, so they copied the Egyptian practise of making men brown and women white.

depends on, bronze is much easier to work with, but proper iron is more ductile than bronze. however, it is not easy making proper iron and shit one tends to be soft and brittle.

Egyptians depcited Syrians and Libians as white though

less than a percent of a percent of the steel weapons were made of crucible steel and none looked quite as striking as their modern equivalents as we have temperature material and acid control over the final product

Bronze (and early iron weapons) was poured into moulds, not forged. Bronze is a superior material to iron, it holds a sharper edge and is harder, and it has a much lower melting point. It's also slightly heavier, but not so you'd notice with a sword. Iron has two key advantages: It's incredibly abundant and therefore cheap, and it can be used to make steel, which IS superior to bronze in hardness and sharpness.

So? Look how they depicted themselves. Brown men, white women. It's stylistic, and the Minoans adopted it from them.

pouring iron requires a blast furnace, an advanced technology unknonw to Europe until the 11tch century BC.
The only ones ever tried to cast swords from cast iron where the chinese, they also tried to decarburize the swords, but it generally did not work out well.
bronze is superior to cast iron and low quality iron, it is equal to normal quality iron and inferior to steel.

Bronze is much easier to work with, but iron is cheaper and more abundant.

>pouring iron requires a blast furnace, an advanced technology unknonw to Europe until the 11tch century BC

Iron was worked in Southern Europe since the 14th-13th century bc, because of trade with Cyprus/Anatolia but was never dominant until much, much later

yes worked with, but not cast. it was smelted in a bloomery, To actually smelt iron you need a big blast furnace and powered bellows, that came much later in Europe.

>To actually smelt iron
melt, sorry,
Anyways, it takes quite some technology to really melt iron, it was for sure not done in the european bronze age.

moreover you have absolutely no idea what the fuck you are saying

>(and early iron weapons)
no. just no, casting iron is really advanced metallurgy and it wasn't even possible until early modern period.

It was practiced in Sardinia during the late bronze age

>Sardinia is rich in first-rate iron ores, and iron smelting is documented in several nuraghi. Therefore some scholars have suggested that western iron went to Cyprus from Sardinia in return for a cargo of Cypriot copper, traded in the form of oxhide ingots.

academia.edu/2061542/Metallurgy_in_Italy_between_the_Late_Bronze_Age_and_the_Early_Iron_Age_the_Coming_of_Iron

Nubians and other Sudanese tribes, no; Ethiopia, yes. Ethiopia/Aksum was actually considered a great power during late antiquity by the Romans and Persians, and following the Ethiopian religious and political isolation after the Islamic conquests and withdrawal from coastal areas, Ethiopia still nevertheless managed to fend off Muslim invasions and retain the respect of its neighbours. IIRC, the state at least managed to keep parity with neighbouring Islamic states up to the 1700s.

Ethiopia and its predecessor Aksum are often forgotten and dismissed, unfortunately, despite being by far the most advanced and successful of the few noteworthy black civilisations.

for fucks sake, learn the difference between smelting and casting you moron! Iron was not casted in the bronze age!

Many Egyptian women have always been noticeably lighter-skinned than the men. This isn't remarkable, and it doesn't make them white or black. They were Egyptians.

I'm the "early iron swords were cast" guy. I read it in a book but I'm persuaded by yourself and other Anons that I was wrong. Early iron swords aped the styles of bronze swords but not the method of construction.

Ok the fact that you mentioned smelting confused me on what your point was

What are you babbling about? The Egyptians chose to depict themselves that way, the Minoans adopted it as a stylistic choice in their own art, in neither case does it correspond perfectly with the actual color of the people. Ancient artists had a very limited pallete to draw upon, and art in a preliterate society tends to be easy to "read".

But how did it get to Sardinia, everybody knows you can't travel there by boat.

>can smelt iron from the earth
>can't make a fucking cart so as not to have to carry everything on their fucking heads

Africa.

Gr8 b8 m8.

Bronze is better than sharpened wooden sticks or stone, though.

They used a bicycle on several occasions?

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>less than a percent of a percent of the steel weapons were made of crucible steel
None of the weapons you see there are made of crucible steel and historical findings and descriptions of the weapons indicate that they did indeed look like that.

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those swords are literally made using exact same techniques they did in late iron age and migration period.

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seaxy