Societies with Delayed Iron Ages

[RufusCorvus]

I guess this could technically go in the worldbuilding forum, as that's what this pertains to, but it is also just to sate my curiosity.

I know Japan is the nation most commonly cited as being poor in minerals (iron being the chief example), but I was wondering what other nations in the world are in the same boat. Google is of little help, but it did turn up one book that cites Peru and Syria as being mineral poor as well.

Anyone have some knowledge to share?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm curious about the types of cultures that form without access to the traditional European resources. Japan and the Inca Empire are a decent start.

[Tvtyrant]

I guess this could technically go in the worldbuilding forum, as that's what this pertains to, but it is also just to sate my curiosity.

I know Japan is the nation most commonly cited as being poor in minerals (iron being the chief example), but I was wondering what other nations in the world are in the same boat. Google is of little help, but it did turn up one book that cites Peru and Syria as being mineral poor as well.

Anyone have some knowledge to share?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm curious about the types of cultures that form without access to the traditional European resources. Japan and the Inca Empire are a decent start.
Which particular resources are you speaking of? Japan had both iron and coal deposits back in the day if I recall correctly, which are both quintessential mineral resources.

Egypt might match your question, as it had great difficulty in procuring iron back in the New Kingdom.

[RufusCorvus]

Mostly iron, I guess. I'm far out of my depth when it comes to geology.

[AsteriskAmp]

I guess this could technically go in the worldbuilding forum, as that's what this pertains to, but it is also just to sate my curiosity.

I know Japan is the nation most commonly cited as being poor in minerals (iron being the chief example), but I was wondering what other nations in the world are in the same boat. Google is of little help, but it did turn up one book that cites Peru and Syria as being mineral poor as well.

Anyone have some knowledge to share?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm curious about the types of cultures that form without access to the traditional European resources. Japan and the Inca Empire are a decent start.
Peru is in no way mineral poor; matter of fact, most of Peru's GDP is from mining. It has massive amounts of highlands and mining is so prevalent there are regions which make more than 80% of their income on minerals alone. Peru is in terms of economy a mining country, with most of its income based on minerals.

The incans also had massive access to minerals, they just didn't use it for tools but for decoration, with massive discs of gold and silver made for the Temple of the Sun and the Moon for example and the Inca (the title of their leader, the actual culture called themselves something entirely different) wore almost everything made of gold. There is a tale that they tried to bribe the head conqueror, Pizarro, to release the incan leader at the time by bribing him with two rooms filled to the brim with silver and one with gold, said rooms are called "Los Cuartos del Rescate" and can be found in the former Incan capital of Cuzco.

[RufusCorvus]

Peru is in no way mineral poor; matter of fact, most of Peru's GDP is from mining. It has massive amounts of highlands and mining is so prevalent there are regions which make more than 80% of their income on minerals alone. Peru is in terms of economy a mining country, with most of its income based on minerals.

The incans also had massive access to minerals, they just didn't use it for tools but for decoration, with massive discs of gold and silver made for the Temple of the Sun and the Moon for example and the Inca (the title of their leader, the actual culture called themselves something entirely different) wore almost everything made of gold. There is a tale that they tried to bribe the head conqueror, Pizarro to release the incan leader at the time by bribing him with two rooms filled to the brim with silver and one with gold, said rooms are called "Los Cuartos del Rescate" and can be found in the former Incan capital of Cuzco.

Good to know, thank you. I've been through college: I should know better than to trust books that don't have citations. :smalltongue:

[AsteriskAmp]

Good to know, thank you. I've been through college: I should know better than to trust books that don't have citations. :smalltongue:It could refer to the Pre-Incan cultures of which access to minerals was different, but it would be sketchy in many senses because of how damn odd Peruvian history gets in relation to development over the other side of the pond with empires popping up and out in different zones with little knowledge of what actually caused them to collapse. In most cases them having surgery and anaesthetics at around 200 A.D. but lacking the ability to produce high quality weapons or not mysteriously die out. Add in the ability to produce millennial sand lines without a way to keep their own buildings standing up after a long time. Only did the later Pre-Incan cultures (and some of them eventually becoming contemporaries and eventual subjects of them, if not outright them according to some theories) access mining at a degree which affected their culture.

[RufusCorvus]

It could refer to the Pre-Incan cultures of which access to minerals was different, but it would be sketchy in many senses because of how damn odd Peruvian history gets in relation to development over the other side of the pond with empires popping up and out in different zones with little knowledge of what actually caused them to collapse. In most cases them having surgery and anaesthetics at around 200 A.D. but lacking the ability to produce high quality weapons or not mysteriously die out. Add in the ability to produce millennial sand lines without a way to keep their own buildings standing up after a long time. Only did the later Pre-Incan cultures (and some of them eventually becoming contemporaries and eventual subjects of them, if not outright them according to some theories) access mining at a degree which affected their culture.

It could, but the only relevant sentence I scanned was something along the lines of "...and other mineral poor nations, such as Peru or Syria".

Since you seem to be a good person to ask: do you have any recommendations for reading up on Pre-Incan cultures? And the Inca, too. It sounds fascinating.

[AsteriskAmp]

It could, but the only relevant sentence I scanned was something along the lines of "...and other mineral poor nations, such as Peru or Syria".

Since you seem to be a good person to ask: do you have any recommendations for reading up on Pre-Incan cultures? And the Inca, too. It sounds fascinating.Jorge Basadre, a Peruvian historian, has a great deal of books on the subject of Peruvian history in general, from Caral, the first city on South America to modern history; he has a famous compendium. Fernando Kauffman has History but adds in art. For full frontal images of Pre-Incan material Jose Antonio Del Busto.

Incan times have "Cronicas" (chronicles) from the Spanish that arrived on the conquest regarding lifestyle in the Incan society just before the Spanish arrived (the priests and historians could actually talk to Peruvian indians which had lived during that time), there is Garcilaso de la Vega's chronicles, which was a "mestizo" (mixed blood, he was the son of a conqueror and an Inca princess), his are the most tidy, they even include illustrations; Poma de Ayala's chronicle which was an actual Inca which had lived under the Incan rule and wrote his chronicle under the Spanish rule and there was another famous one which I cannot for my life remember. For more modern sources on the study of archaeological remains of the Incas and their contemporaries (Inca empire picks up around 1000 A.D. until the Spanish arrive in which the empire was still in full bloom but had just come out of a civil war) Maria Rostworowski has several books on the Empire itself and Raúl Porras Barrenechea also has books on the subject. Sadly that's mostly the bibliographical, internationally accessible limit to information; a lot of books on the subject are only sold locally and the museums which have frankly amazing quantities of guides and books on the many aspects of society are limited due to lack of funding from publishing beyond locally.

Pre-Incan times are somewhat harder to find a consolidated source other than High-School history books. Each Pre-Incan civilisation had an iconic historian/archeologer which centred almost exclusively on it. For the first proper empire, Chavin you have Julio C. Tello and Antonio Raymondi, you get stonework awesome here; sculpted heads of stone, epic engineering feat by having natural air conditioning for a semi-subterranean temple. There are a massive number of cultures in between, but the next big thing is Paracas, Tello and his disciple, Toribio Mejía are also the main authors on it. Great things in relation to building things on the dessert and having city complexes as well as a sea shell based economy. The next great thing is then Nazca, who had anaesthetics and aestetic surgery as well as their epic sand lines; Maria Reiche is your to go lady for them, she practically devoted herself to the culture and swept through a desert with a broom to preserve the remains while trying to manage to bring the culture to public awareness. Later on you have Moche with hydraulic engineering and use of copper for weapons; a lot of awesome stuff happens with them, but I don't know a precise author to cite on them. Tiahuanaco and Wari are the last empire before the Incas and most material on the Incas also talks about them because some postulate the Incas are merely a Tiahuanaco splinter group and Wari to some degree was contemporaneous to the Incas as well as a lot of their developments appearing on both Tiahuanaco and the Inca Empire, which gave rise to the hypothesis that they may not really be that far apart. This last three get so much stuff I cannot succinctly cover all of the things they do; crop rotation, hydraulic projects, massive society advances and assimilation rather than conquest, solar clocks, stonework without need of paste by using geometry, calendars, jungle building, jungle warfare... and much more.

That's mostly it in very broad strokes; it's one of the topics were the wealth of information is going to be in Spanish because apart from Hiram Bingan and Macchu Picchu and Yale's theft of some relics there isn't much interest in research of Peruvian history, this is also compounded by political elements which I won't detail but mostly boil down to "the local government is less interested on their ruins than external governments".

EDIT: El Comercio, a Peruvian news empire and foundation regularly publishes books on the topic, but how accessible they are, I do not know; though I can answer any doubt or interest through PM if you take interest to any particular culture or in terms of broad strokes and I do have access to a fair share of said material. They do have massive amounts of stuff on the subject but it isn't freely available outside of Peru, much less South America; so even if they are probably the best source you could find, I hesitate to recommend them.

[Serpentine]

Not sure whether it counts as a mineral, but there is an element (Selenium, iirc) that is needed by plants, but in such incredibly minuscule trace amounts that it wasn't thought possible for any soil to not have enough of it.
Guess what Australian soils are deficient in.

[Telonius]

Iron is fairly abundant in most places. What was lacking was the knowledge of how to use it, the means to smelt it (lack of trees to fuel a forge), the political organization or available farmland required to support widespread use of it, or special local conditions that meant other similar materials were cheaper or easier to use.

[Kobold-Bard]

Not sure whether it counts as a mineral, but there is an element (Selenium, iirc) that is needed by plants, but in such incredibly minuscule trace amounts that it wasn't thought possible for any soil to not have enough of it.
Guess what Australian soils are deficient in.

So as well as all the humanicidal animals and the murderous weather/environment, you have plants that can't survive and yet do anyway (aka. undead trees)?

Why would people voluntarily remain in such a hellish place? Are the beaches really worth it?

[Morph Bark]

Why would people voluntarily remain in such a hellish place? Are the beaches really worth it?

Australia is subject to a certain type of radiation that happens to be really good for the skin and a major reason for Australian gorjusnus.


Corvus, are you specifically looking for nations that had little access to minerals, or just simply didn't have it (or ability to access it) in their own country? While I live in an area utterly devoid of any sort of mining, many cities here have always been trading centers, so indirect access wasn't ever much of a problem.

[Serpentine]

Nah, it just means our plants are adapted to deal with the lack of it. Like carnivorous plants have adapted to a lack of nitrogen in the soil (related: Australia has the greatest diversity of sundew plants in the world).

[RufusCorvus]

Australia is subject to a certain type of radiation that happens to be really good for the skin and a major reason for Australian gorjusnus.


Corvus, are you specifically looking for nations that had little access to minerals, or just simply didn't have it (or ability to access it) in their own country? While I live in an area utterly devoid of any sort of mining, many cities here have always been trading centers, so indirect access wasn't ever much of a problem.

More the first. For my purposes, the area in question (continent, actually), has had outside contact at least three times. It's just rare, because all the other continents are on the other side of the world and sea monsters are in between.

And I'm looking most specifically at iron.

[Yora]

Didn't the Indians of North America not use any iron, or at least not at a large scale? The presence of metals is not much use when people can't easily get to it and therefore find no meaningful use for it.

[RufusCorvus]

Didn't the Indians of North America not use any iron, or at least not at a large scale? The presence of metals is not much use when people can't easily get to it and therefore find no meaningful use for it.

Yes, but I'm looking less for examples of tribes that don't use iron and more for civilizations that don't.

[pffh]

Iceland had hardly any metals and what iron we did have was so bad that a famous chieftain had a spear in one of our civil wars that was so bad he had to bend the point back into shape after each stab.

[lsfreak]

Yes, but I'm looking less for examples of tribes that don't use iron and more for civilizations that don't.
Mississippian culture? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture)

From brief searching, the only metalworking they did was lead and copper.

[nedz]

Yes, but I'm looking less for examples of tribes that don't use iron and more for civilizations that don't.
Mississippian culture? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture)

From brief searching, the only metalworking they did was lead and copper.

Also Aztec, Inca, Maya, etc.
Iron working was not developed in pre-Columbian Americas.

Also Polynesia, Bantu, Zulu

Also Japan had a very late Iron Age

Iron working was a Eurasian development, Bronze too.

[Tebryn]

Yes, but I'm looking less for examples of tribes that don't use iron and more for civilizations that don't.

You have a distinct misunderstanding of the North American Indians if you think they were all tribal groups and not actual civilizations. One that's not mentioned would be the Iroquois League or Confederacy which spanned at it's height from New York to Ohio and parts of Ontario. It's thought that parts of the Confederacy's government influenced the American Founding Fathers. Not to mention at least in Ohio, there are a ton of places named with Iroquoian names to this day.

[ericgrau]

Mostly iron, I guess. I'm far out of my depth when it comes to geology.

Well iron is everywhere. Iron and glass are practically processed dirt/rock. Japan had some trouble because of their impure iron but they worked around it. Brick & clay are more processed dirt, and stone is of course rock. I think you'd have a hard time finding a nation that was mineral poor in a way that affected their development. They might be short on precious metals or fossil fuels, which can have interesting effects.

The technology to smelt iron was a bigger issue for a while. It takes a very high temperature. IIRC from middle school you need the right shaped coal furnace with proper air input to reach the temperatures for smelting iron. Likewise aluminum is practically dirt, but we needed electricity before we could get it in the metal form. Aluminum factories are often situated near power plants to ease the load on the grid's power lines.

[RufusCorvus]

You have a distinct misunderstanding of the North American Indians if you think they were all tribal groups and not actual civilizations. One that's not mentioned would be the Iroquois League or Confederacy which spanned at it's height from New York to Ohio and parts of Ontario. It's thought that parts of the Confederacy's government influenced the American Founding Fathers. Not to mention at least in Ohio, there are a ton of places named with Iroquoian names to this day.

I misspoke and apologize if I've touched a nerve, but I am also not interested in turning this into a discussion on American Indians.


Well iron is everywhere. Iron and glass are practically processed dirt. Japan had some trouble because of their impure iron but they worked around it. Brick & clay are more processed dirt, and stone is of course rock. I think you'd have a hard time finding a nation that was mineral poor in a way that affected their development. They might be short on precious metals or fossil fuels, which can have interesting effects.

The technology to smelt iron was a bigger issue for a while. It takes a very high temperature. Likewise aluminum is practically dirt, but we needed electricity before we could get it in the metal form. Aluminum factories are often situated near power plants to ease the load on the grid.

This seems to be getting more to what I want: What in particular makes the iron of Japan impure?

I admit my initial request was vague and the topic title was misleading. I apologize for that. If anyone has a suggestion on what else to call it (Cultures with Impure Iron/Delayed Iron Ages?), I would be more than happy to change it if doing so better directs the discussion on the path I intended, however poorly I may have worded my initial question.

[ericgrau]

Just skimming this it seems to be more of a technology spreading issue than a resource scarcity issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_age
It talks of the techniques moving across the area and the people at the end point are the last to learn it.

Besides mining precious items, resource scarcity could have a bigger impact on food production which can then affect development overall. It all depends on the local climate.

[nedz]

It is mainly a technological problem, but there can be resource issues.

To make Iron you need Iron Ore + Wood (Charcoal) or Coal.
Steel is another thing entirely.

Iceland was mentioned earlier — it's main problem was a shortage of wood and complete absence of coal.

Bronze is actually more complex in that it requires Copper + Tin (usually), but it could be smelted more easily (lower temperatures / simpler furnace).

[Tavar]

I misspoke and apologize if I've touched a nerve, but I am also not interested in turning this into a discussion on American Indians.

So you want to have a discussion about non-iron using cultures, excepting this one large and numerous set of non-iron using cultures because....?

[Tvtyrant]

There are the Polynesian Islands for areas that never independently developed iron production.

[Xuc Xac]

Bronze is actually more complex in that it requires Copper + Tin (usually), but it could be smelted more easily (lower temperatures / simpler furnace).

Bronze is actually superior to iron for almost every purpose. The Iron Age didn't happen because people discovered that iron was better. It was an economic problem. Bronze is made from copper and tin, but copper and tin aren't often found together. I think most of the tin in Europe and northern Africa was imported from Britain. The Iron Age was the result of disruptions in the tin supply that drove up the cost of bronze. People didn't turn to iron because it was superior. Iron was brittle rusty crap but it was cheap. When rank and file soldiers were carrying iron weapons, the officers were still using bronze.

The advantage of iron was that it was all over the place so you could get it almost anywhere and you didn't need to mix it with anything else. Iron wasn't "good" until they figured out how to turn it into steel. Steel is better than bronze, but bronze was better than iron, so people only used iron when they couldn't get (or afford) bronze. Some civilizations that joined the Iron Age late could have done so because they still had plenty of bronze. If you have all the copper and tin you need, then you have no reason to switch to iron until the early adopters in poorer countries have worked out the bugs and figured out steel.