Would it be possible that one civilization ignores Bronze and jumps straight to Iron (Age)?

Would it be possible that one civilization ignores Bronze and jumps straight to Iron (Age)?

If the technology is imported, yes. Otherwise it seems hard to justify how they get sufficient in metallurgy to do that. Or perhaps they use meteoric iron, which is for some teason abundant in the region.

Just give them a lot of iron fand no bronze/copper

Some crazy autist would eventually figure out something to do with it

Yes, several african kingdoms did exactly that. Lack of tin is usually what makes a bronze age impractical.

Yep, a couple African kingdoms did exactly that.

Absolutely spot-on. It's not about a progression from one to the other, it's about working with what you have.

Didn't they import the technology that's necessary to smelt/forge iron though? IIRC you need more high tech stuff to work with iron than to work with bronze. I might be mistaken about that tho. After all the high civilisations of the bronze age managed to create iron objects out of meteorite just fine.

Jambo

Habari Gani?

That was the theory until we found iron tools in west africa dating to before it could have plausibly spread from Anatolia/Eurasian steppe to the Middle-East, to Sub-Saharan Africa

The locals figured it out on their own

Nope, they were smelting other metals like gold and eventually worked out iron forging that way - the problem in africa is that surface copper deposits are fucking scarce as fuck but iron deposits are plentiful.

The interesting thing is that this is thought to have happened independently in several areas of africa - west africa did this, but so did central and southern africa.

Bronze age is apparently just a cheat other civilisations do to get ezy mode.

BRONZE AGE IS WHITE PRIVILEGE!
DAMN WHITEYS WITH THEIR UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPPER AND TIN!

I don't know why North America didn't developed metal tools then?

Why do I get the feeling that a lot of people would actually believe this statement.

>I don't know why North America didn't developed metal tools then?

They did, the metallurgical tradition associated with metals was just different.

For example, in South America they had extensive knowledge of metallurgy and how to work bronze, but never saw metal as anything more than an adornment or status symbol, even when the Inca began spreading and started associating metal with more utilitarian usage.

Mesoamerica didn't even have a metallurgical tradition until the 800s (due to their very hostile environment that was quite unsuited to low-tech mining) and was mostly imported from the South, which again associated metal less with "we can make swords out of this" and more with "hey, this shit's shiny."

The North Americans meanwhile kept using copper as they always did.

Ah okay, I wasn't aware of that and that's kinda cool actually. Still seems like they developed the capacity to forge iron objects by elaborating upon previous known smelting knowledge tho, which was what I was trying to suggest.
Do we have any knowledge of a society that managed to learn iron smelting before any other kind? I'm severly unknowledged in this regard so perhaps that is practically impossible.

Homie, it's the exact same fucking principle.

If you have a thing for long enough you will find a way to use it.

The important thing here would seem to be a pretty high-powered smelting furnace, and I'm not sure why you'd have somethign like that in the first place if you're not smelting other metals.

How big were they on glazing ceramics? Maybe we could do the jump from there.

Or maybe someone built one specifically for iron because they say other shit melt and said "I wonder..."

Your a big kang

If they know how to build it, then that counts as having it in cases like this. Somehow they need to get iron ore hot enough to notice that getting it even hotter could be a good idea. If you're already smelting metals, that's somewhat easy, as we're looking at pretty high temperatures, and the knowledge that some stones can be turned into metals.

Glazing likewise deals with heating minerals a lot, and encourages testing different materials.

But if we're mostly just starting out with a kitchen kiln or camp-fire? Sure, I wouldn't write it off entirely, an ore roasting fire can get to the point where slag starts appearing in small quantities, and that's just a bonfire. But still, it is a pretty substantial leap compared to if we have some technology in that direction already.

>Or perhaps they use meteoric iron, which is for some teason abundant in the region.
I'm imagining a Metal as fuck setting with barbarians and constant meteor impacts.

The Philippines also had a thing for iron. Not sure if it was imported, but they had easy access to iron veins and loved forging swords.

Because the year is 2016 and satire can't keep up with reality anymore.