Iron't you glad I made this video? Check out From Nothing's: th-cam.com/video/3wP9dES2dkM/w-d-xo.html & Ollie Bye's: Not finished yet but I'll update this soon.
@@OkurkaBinLadin I thought most people with even the slightest bit of interest in trade in antiquity would know of them. Not to even mention D'mt and the succeeding Aksumite Kingdom that was very much up and running in antiquity, I'd say they're pretty well known.
@@TaariikhdaAfrika to you but most westerners bought the racist drivel of colonialism and savages and still believe it till now so the concept of advanced African civilisations other than Egypt is straight up heresy to them
Kinda irritates me when people think Egypt and Nubia as the only civilizations worth mentioning. When will they mention that fucking Mansa Musa, the richest man in history spent so much gold in Egypt that he fucking destroyed their economy for an entire decade!?
The problem with iron artifacts is that it becomes very hard very quickly to get well preserved iron samples from older time periods. For example: Bronze artifacts from ~2000 BCE are sometimes better preserved than iron artifacts from ~1200 CE.
@@amenrakwamehotepporchprima9307 The kind of dryness needed to stop iron from rusting over thousands of years is pretty rare on earth and also not coincidentally occur in areas where very few people live if at all. iron rusts very easily.
@@amenrakwamehotepporchprima9307 North Africa and the sahara region where people live aren't that dry. Look at the iron stuff used in those places. A lot of rusting still happens. Less than that of humid areas of course, but it isn't negligible and will eat up the iron over a thousand years. 6 iron artifacts that were found. Many could've been made, most lost. And besides those 6(or 2) were made in early days. Its not like nobody made anything from iron in later more recent times. As no. of iron artifacts increased those 6(2) would've become not so valuable. Of those 33% that are desert about a third is the cold desert of antarctica. The total desert surface area is about 18,911,884 sq. mi. The total area of antarctic desert is 5,405,000 sq. mi. A little less than 1/3 rd of the total desert surface.
No matter which side of the argument you are on, it's clear that there needs to be research and excavations in Africa. It's really cool to learn more about the iron age on the continent of Africa.
Like a lot of "arguments" these days, almost no one is on the "other" side. It's just the same boring cliches thrown about. Scientists of all branches of learning have been mining every corner of society and the planet looking for information and answers. No one serious is leaving out any particular group, race, culture, etc. in the pursuit of knowledge.
@@warrennyexactly they aren’t being left out. Also if a bunch of people went there and started digging and Hod forbid they were white?!? 😂 they’d be racist. Also everyone’s all about the western world leaving everyone alone. So they can do it themselves. Why doesn’t Africa discover its own history if it wants to? I doubt they need or want any help. Any help will be highly scrutinized and I doubt anyone wants to open that can of worms in todays world
@@warrenny It's not that the scientists want to leave out Africa it's that large parts of Africa are inaccessible without adequate roads, and in the case of the Central African Republic, dangerous. Also, communication is way more limited, while someone stumbling across the remains of an ancient village would likely be reported on by that person in Europe, a similar situation in Africa may simply never reach the rest of the world simply due to lack of communication, especially in the central African Republic.
@@Garmin21111 actually my assertion is that people have these cliched ideas that scientists are biased against Africa. When in actuality, scientists are very interested in Africa. So I agree with you that any work not being done anywhere in the world is usually due to lack of accessibility to the regions whether it be political or logistical.
You think they were in the Iron Age, then they what,,, never kept it up? Inventions run in a linear fashion. Why would we look for something when the people are still there and weren’t making anything
What a man smashing out all these interesting videos! I've been struggling with sleep recently, and I say this in the nicest possible sense, your videos are fantastic to have on if I can't get to sleep. They are wonderfully calming and if I still can't sleep, at least I'm learning about some fascinating topics. Thank you for your hard work and big love to you Stefan!
if you speak at least 1 foreign language, try counting. 1 in your first language, then 2 in a foreign one and so on. I had to use this method twice (yeah, I sleep well in general), and I don't remember reaching 40 (Hungarian, English, German)
Pottery was the first manmade material. To make pottery you need high heat, a kiln. Mess around with high heat for long enough you notice its effects on various other raw materials besides clay. So where ever pottery is produced given enough time and curiosity metallurgy follows.
Then basically metallurgy could have begun with the Jomon. Personally I think one of the first copper ages could well have been in the Lake Superior region due to the generous amounts of nearly pure float copper.
The same thing could be said about gold. Smelting gold takes some pretty high temperatures as well. Iron spear and axe points were very valuable and useful. Anybody that knew how to make them could get rich very fast. The message would spread widely and quickly.
@@Eidolon1andOnly If they have glaze on the pottery they've got kilns. One thing I think societies need to make the jump to metals is a readily accessible and workable source of metal. And that really only works with things like float copper and iron nickel meteors without smelting.
I love that theory… it gives you a really good picture of a guy who got his kiln too hot one day and found all these weird shiny inclusions in his pottery where copper melted out of copper ore embedded in the clay. Now they try to reproduce it… no good. Get more clay from that one spot where they first time came from and then it works… but only on windy days… they just keep experimenting and refining until they discover how to reproduce it consistently. THEN they discover they can work the metal. I really love the way your theory plays in my mind… it means that there’s a continuous line from the first potter to the last iron-age metalworker!
I just couldn't grasp this radio carbon dating time gap issue until I saw that metal horses head with a fairly light tiarra and it all just magically fell into place
When it comes to Africa, the outside world always comes at it with the highest levels of doubt, skepticism and underestimation, even when Africa produces good evidence on par with other regions of the world.
Absolutely. Invention of Writing (the writing system in use in the world today) is placed doubt in favour of borrowing from Sumer far away when the Sumerian cuneiform is different from the sound-system invented in Sudan (Ta Seti), the Hieroglyaphics used in Kush and Egypt. The African writing system (often called Egyptian by Europeans) commenced in the same millenia 3,320BC as the Sumerian cuneiform.
In science, if you've had an idea, most likely someone else has as well. So it's entirely possible, maybe even likely, that just like calculus, iron working was invented more than once, in more than one place.
Correct, just like the morphic field. There's a field of knowledge that organisms of the same species can tap into and sort of download information from, independently at different geographical locations.
I don't know what if they had the first iron age but they certainly have the oldest mine which is the Ngwenya mine on Bomvu Ridge. It goes back to 40,000 years.
idk, the oldest use of iron is there. But it was just used for art not tools or weapons. I believe they traded iron mask to other places. edit: oldest use of iron that we know of as of late. we could find older iron stuff in another place
As usual Stefan, I thoroughly enjoyed this video. I have been watching your videos for quite some time now and wanted to take the time to thank you for all your time and effort involved in sharing such interesting information with the world. I am fairly new to TH-cam and you were one of the first channels that I subscribed to. I can't thank you enough, for reawakening my insatiable thirst for all scientific knowledge! 👍
Hi, I too love learning about hominins of the past. I am interested in neuroscience and artificial intelligence. If you wish, I would like to connect with you
@@averongodoffire8098 I already shared the relevant historiography the first time it was asked but my comment was censored. If you want unbiased historical information this is not the channel.
The use of Irn Bru constantly throughout this video made me more happy than it should. This was so interesting, I love when topics challenge preconceived ideas/stuff we just assume is fact!
Saw a video of traditional African iron smelters making a mud furnace, collecting red soil (iron ore) and gathering village strong men to pump the bellows for days to get iron bloom for their farming tools.. thought perhaps early metal producing cultures just used ore of what was readily available.. copper producers had copper ore.. iron producers had iron ore..
Poetry stirs the heart, inflamed passions lead to conflict, conflict drives ironworking for weapons of war. Makes total sense, even if it was an autocorrect typo.
I confess, I've left my own autocorrect misplaced words in a post. Sometimes the change would give it a flavor that tickled my fancy. "There's many a truth in misspelled words." - S. Freud, (Or he should have said that!)
That was really interesting. I have long had a feeling that many technologies developed independently at different times and places. A perfect example is the antikythera mechanism. This required a very high level of knowledge of maths, astronomy and mechanics plus the skills in metalwork to produce it. All of that was lost and had to be re-invented centuries later.
There is a good read published by George Celis 1991 on the last bloomeries in Africa. The technology presented there is so strikingly different from what we know today from the early iron workings in Mesopotamia, that it truly looks like being a native invention especially in western Africa.
It definitely is a native invention. Currently reading _Ancient Africa Metallurgy: The Socio-Cultural Context_ to really get a good grasp on the history, dating, methods, dates, etc. of how Africa’s Iron Age started, but the book also discusses much about Copper which is an abundant resource Kansanshi, Akjoujt, Nouakchott, Khatt Lemaiteg, and the Tigidit cliff, Eghazer basin & Azawagh valley surrounded by the Aïr mountains... Copper is extremely abundant in Africa, and much of it has been found at ancient grave sites like Anyokan, Asaquru, Wasadan, Tuluk, Ingombe Ilede, etc. The book is now a personal favorite of mine...
What? He's got a "new" mic spoon? What happened to the old tiny white plastic spoon? What sort of cruel swine breaks the Sacred SpoonoMic baton/mace/fasci, an object crucial to our as yet un-named cult of Milo Info Cargo. This has to stop
Truly a golden nugget on TH-cam right here. Keep up the good work lad and never lose sight on what makes you whole and only work on what’s makes you happy.
6:14, the old wood problem is something unique to North American contexts and does not apply to iron furnace technology. For iron making, only specific species of wood with certain properties appropriate to making charcoal are carefully selected to use in furnaces.
... I messed around with "ornamental metals" for a while, made "knife-like objects" as well. One thing I noticed about the serious, skilled practitioners is that they were ALWAYS experimenting with materials and techniques. I have no problem conceptually with "smith-shamans/wizards/mages" discovering and spreading their art through apprenticeships and the like. (Drawing the "sword from the stone" may be an elaborate metaphor for smithcraft...)
If you have time, you can find that in Serbia they found iron needle, discovered on the site in 2002, is considered to be one of the oldest surviving metallic objects on the planet. It was made from the stainless iron, without any hollows. It is 64.5 cm (25.4 in) long and dated to the 14th century BC (c.1300 BC). It considered a technological wonder even by modern standards as iron of such purity hardly can be produced even today. It is 98,86% pure iron and apparently can't rust.
When I was in africa ivory coast...the villages made their own iron in a clay tower about 8 ft tall. Seemed one could make iron by mistake with the method of a clay oven. Just put a iron oxide lump in or the iron rich soil and hot fire and I bet Iron was around a lot longer than thought,
@@rodpaget9796 I'm sure it was accidentally discovered several times, but I'm baffled who figured out to keep reheating and hammering the bloom after they got their pool of copper. That's a metric butt ton of hard work. My dad was a metallurgical engineer and he had a copy of Herbert Hoover's translation of De Re Metallica by Agricola. It was published in 1556. It might have some ideas...
@@IvorMektin1701 I think we sometimes over think the developments at times. it would not surprise me that the smith was bored and just hammered the bloom while hot because lets face it, you would too, and noticed a interesting change. Maybe one guy, maybe generations of dicking about with bloom led to the discovery of iron.
> - Pringle, Heather. "Seeking Africa's First Iron Men" (PDF). Science. p. 2. - Holl, Augustin F. C. (June 2020). "The Origins of African Metallurgies". Oxford Research Encyclopedias. 22 (4): 415-438. *Below are lectures (which can be found on youtube) by Professor Chris Ehret (University of California)* Ancient Africa in world history: Innovation, Invention, and Impact Lecture by Chris Ehret (University of California) Africanity of Ancient Egypt Lecture by Chris Ehret (University of California)
Saw thew original documentary about two years ago, and they actually did the smelting in a clay kiln...( Of course they did a lot of ancestral worship and before the actual smelting ) But when I saw that hot, molten iron flowing out of that clay kiln, I was flabbergasted!
When I was in africa ivory coast...the villages made their own iron in a clay tower about 8 ft tall. Seemed one could make iron by mistake with the method of a clay oven. Just put a iron oxide lump in or the iron rich soil lump or two, charcoal, and hot fire and I bet Iron was around a lot longer than thought,
@Shane Ashby Not at all the smelting techniques in many of African societies that produced Iron tools/weapons were very advanced were not surpassed until European industrial revolution.
@Shane Ashby yes that is the case my historically inept friend..there are even some African cultures that produced steel thousands of years before steel was a thing but that's a subject still being studied...imagine being so bias in 2020 my god....
Iron is in fact very difficult to process, no one 'makes it by mistake' in a clay oven, to think someone could betrays a complete lack of knowledge of metallurgy. There's a reason the Bronze Age happened centuries earlier than the Iron Age in the Mediterranean; and on Cyprus, the main source of Mediterranean copper for centuries, iron ores occur naturally mixed right in with the copper ores, yet for centuries the Cypriots just discarded the iron slag and never bothered developing the process for refining it, in part b/c it's so much more complicated than that for copper.
@@almishti Look up Bog Iron and get back to me....I saw what the africans did first hand in an area of dirt that was almost iron ore.....I am not talking about damascus steel either....
There is a very interesting book called “the lightning bird“. Among many other things it elaborates on the use of iron ochre ( the blood of the earth)as body paint in south Africa, with evidence of it’s mining up to (if I’m remembering g correctly) 20,000 years ago. It seems that this would have put them in a perfect position to transition to an iron age
Very convenient! I was just looking into this! I know my ancestors were already working copper for a while before developing iron working as soon as shipwrecks from Asia started landing on the coast of British Columbia in the 1800's. A very cool Tlingit short sword from Alaska is made from meteoric iron.
Awesome video as always. I've seen all your videos a few times. I've had a head injury and can't remember what I've watched,so no one in my house will watch anything with me anymore. So I watch stuff over and over like it's the first time I've seen it. Keep up the good work
Some Europeans assumed Africans couldn't have invented iron-smelting. Would it be 'ironic' if we eventually discover that Africa invented it first? Perhaps this isn't a 'ferric' good joke.
Ha, I was writing a comment about how ceramic production is hypothesized to have lead to the discovery of metal working, then got to the section where you talk about it. Great video!
Good video. But I noticed one very important mistake: 2:43 "Scottish soft drinks are made from iron". They're actually made from the two main things you find in Scotland. Shortbread and heroin.
What about the iron being used as practice material for students since it was first considered worthless? Would make good use of mistakes when fire got to hot.
I've been an AMATEUR metallurgist for years... and watching this video, the penny FINALLY dropped as to why cast iron is so brittle and wrought iron is a totally different thing to that. Yes I must be a bit of a dullard... but still... thanks for the simple explanation that even I can grasp. ;)
One thing that might mitigate the "old wood" problem for the central african finds is examining charcoal burning methods in that region in the present. Charcoal burning is likely one of humanities most ancient industries, and the methods do not change much with the passage of time. Growing up in West Africa, I often saw charcoal burners as a kid, and was shocked to find that the methods used in places in Eastern Europe are incredibly similar. It would stand to reason that methods in heavily forested areas in particular, such as central africa, would hardly change at all over centuries or even millenia. If charcoal burners prefer certain trees, it could give some clues to exactly how old wood used for charcoal could be.
Yeah, the fact that people citing old wood problem don't do more research to confirm shows they are more concerned about proving the consensus than getting to facts.
Once again outstanding thoroughly done research.. unbiased and thought provoking keeping an open mind..keep on keeping on sir..thank you for sharing intersting info..have a better one
West Africa to me was the cradle of Sub-Saharan African civilizations like Greco-Rome was to Europe, bringing agriculture, metallurgy, science, pottery, seafaring, etc throughout the rest of the continent. The largest, most powerful, and earliest empires existed in West Africa, of course not neglecting the many achievements and civilizations found in other regions of Africa.
I was talking about greco-romans being cradle of european civilazation btw. Celts had seafearing, metals etc. So had the nordic bronze age too, and I believe several other european cultures that was not greco-romans.
Wrong. Cheikh Anta Diop proved that Kemet-Kush (Egypt & Sudan) plays that role for africa. On the linguistic part, he made a comparison between ancient kemet language and Wolof, and the words are almost the same. Other others did the same with ancient egyptian language. Ask chatgbt it will tell you.
I hope the look of the geography has been taken into account here. A slightly different geography, weather patterns, and any additional research into cultural evolution and genetics of surrounding areas could prove to be essential in figuring this out. Where people lived, how they lived at differents times, what the waterways and land looked like back when in relation to trade, etc.
The Haya people in modern Tanzania invented some high quality steel, the likes we did not see until the 19th century. They invented the method themselves given that no other culture had that skill. So obviously te creativty exists there.
You're making great videos, with good work on the sources. Your humility always serves your point, it's great to follow your channel and i am glad to have discovered it [recently (nonetheless, i've already watched tons of it)]
I still find the racialized geo-political categorizing of Egypt as the “East” as inaccurate. Worse, is the near consistent removal of Nubian Kingdoms of Kush & Axum from the conversations of East-North Africa. (& the usage of the word “sub Saharan”)
The term “Subsaharan” is one I’m surprised hasn’t gone out of style yet. We don’t refer to land south of the Gobi desert as the “Sub-gobi region” for example. This goes back to the colonial examinations of African history. It’s meant to divide North Africa from the rest of Africa in a failed attempt to commandeer the splendid history of Egypt, Carthage, etc.. Classic divide and conquer strategy. It’s our job as history nuts to challenge these very outdated notions and usher in a new era of historical research. One that sees the African continent as a primer location for humanities many civilizations.
I still find the term ‘sub-Saharan’ (used to describe those countries that are not part of North Africa) more adequate than the previous ‘Black Africa’, common during the 19th century and the Western world. But there’s no way to content everyone.
@@DulceN It's not a very useful at all. Why separate North Africa from the rest of Africa like it's some sort of island? Why not exclude the desert regions of Southern Africa from other parts of the continent? Why single out North Africa? As a person from Sahara/Sahel Africa, there has always been a connection between our Northern relatives of the coast as well as our Southern relatives of the tropics. But non-Africans seem to pigeonholed us often to segregate the history our ancestors had built. It bothers me a lot.
I just turned 71 it’s late at night mid June and I can’t stop watching your videos your voice your intelligence and you’re willing to say I don’t know but this is my evidence is quite profound keep on Truckin
The _reason that Africa has less_ archeological excavations is worth mentioning, think. Archeology is a luxury. _Largely due to European colonialism_ ongoing to this day, there is an enormous amount of avoidable human suffering. It would immoral to direct labor efforts to luxuries like archeology while people are starving. We can expect archeology to become a higher priority for Africans when their natural resources are spent improving their own lives instead of increasing the wealth of neo-colonial owners.
It's pretty clear that Tut had an iron blade in his tomb. Which means........they at least had a working knowledge of how to work metals(iron) in the 1324 BCish era. Just because it was from a meteor doesn't mean they didn't need to know how to craft it. Meteors rarely fall in the shape of a knife blade. Or at least a few people of the time knew. I have to assume these people knew what meteors looked like before that and would have kept their eyes open for them as valuable resources(maybe for centuries). If this is the case, it's only a matter of time until they found a source of natural iron. The rust colour is a dead give away. From there the whole iron working age starts. Easy peasy, sort of. I suspect if you look at the oldest iron working sites you'll also find the easiest to access sources of ore. Something visible to the eye as iron and chunky. Maybe a huge ancient impact crater? I know in my area I've often picked up rocks thinking they were meteors only to find out they were large chunks of natural iron. I suspect easy to access sources of iron were more abundant and easier to salvage than sources of copper so I see no reason one would need a working knowledge of copper smelting first although it would have helped......pottery is a lot older than metal working and firing pottery is nearly the same process. We also have to understand iron artifacts rust away much quicker than copper. It's possible they were using it far longer than anyone has imagined, but the evidence is just gone.
@@neutralfellow9736 I've worked in a forge for a while, and I was always warned against cold-working iron because it expends far more energy than its worth if you can heat it up in any way, and depending on the carbon content it could just break. Brittle iron doesn't take well to hammering.
@@Robbiekilljoy69 I would definitely. If not at least we know that the west African ethnic groups definitely didn’t get their metallurgy from outsiders.
@Graf von Losinj "stone to metal working is a ridiculous jump", and by that you mean only a jump that non-Africans could make? Or perhaps plastic working served as the stepping stone for other people?
A lot of archaeological campaigns in Africa were cut short or outright abandoned starting in 1980 when there suddenly was way to much "biblical archaeology" and eurocentric excavations. In subsaharan Africa archaeologists tended to focus on early hominids. This was more a bias and funding shift not black and white or on/off but funding for archaeological campaigns in Africa was hard to come by thereafter.
Wow this was interesting but I did spot one majorly (and one minor) egregious fault: that bacon sandwich seemed to be soggy with rain😮, how dare you sir! The incorrect brand of Brown Sauce can be overlooked because at least it's still the appropriate condiment.
It's frustrating that the Sahara and Sahel cover up so much history, b/c it's easy to forget that a few thousand years ago, much of Africa was quite watery - opening up more water passages and an abundance of woods, plus other flora and fauna today not seen in the region. I hope within my lifetime, Africa will settle down from so much intermittent conflict, then archaeologists and even businesses can migrate to the region. We'd learn so much.
You might want to have a look at the latest Corbett Report with whitney Webb( How green finance is monopolizing the planet). They discuss the so-called green future, when in reality the corporate west is busy reintroducing a frightening form of vulture capitalism/colonialism to Africa and South America. Debt will be used to force countries to cede mineral rich regions to western corporations.As to the intermittent conflicts, everything imaginable will be done to keep the flames burning; after all, a week government ruling over a depopulated country cannot interfere with the flow of resources out of the country.
The sahara and sahel don't cover up history, they preserve it. I have thousands of satellite images that proves my point. The problem are the ongoing post-colonial politics.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if iron had multiple starting points. Damn near everything else did, after all. It's got more than a whiff of the lone genius trope to say otherwise. Have archeology types done as much digging around in West Africa as they have in Egypt and the Mesopatamia area?
@Mr. A. Knight The chariot was primarily used in North Africa or the Sahel Region, not in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is no evidence to support the introduction of ironsmithing or any practice by Eurasians, specifically Carthaginians, he even said it in the video. There have been iron smelting sites throughout Africa dating back as far as 2000 BC, which indicate this method was local or spread by groups such as the Bantu. There was little interaction in terms of travel between Sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world until 600 AD, which began the Trans-Saharan Trade. This issue is also why Great Zimbabwe (despite not being the only stone city in Central Africa) is thought to have been built by Arabs without any evidence backing it up.
@@petergriffin3723 Agree. Except Great Zimbabwe is not thought to have been built by Arabs anymore - it's an old outdated theory - (some thought that in the colonial era, but the evidence has for a while shown the culture and city to have been indigenous).
@Mr. A. Knight I don't understand what you're trying to say? Yes, the Roman Empire had contact with West Africa around 100 BC as you said, but that was a thousand years after West Africa began practicing iron-smelting and there is no record of them having introducing metallurgy in that region. Also even if the Carthaginians had contact with West Africa, which they did, there is no evidence that supports the claim that Carthaginians brought the knowledge of metallurgy to West Africa or other regions. The Carthaginians began around 800 BC, and began smelting iron around 500 BC, meanwhile the Nok Culture was practicing iron-smelting since 500 BC or earlier, with older sites such as Obui in Central Africa dating back to 2000 BC. Not saying that you're completely wrong, but there's just not enough evidence to support outside influence, it can only be logical the indigenous people have innovated iron due to the lack of other metals in their respected regions, or could have been introduced by other Sub-Saharan African groups that independently practiced iron-smelting.
Sounds like West Africa due to its many sites seems most plausible. Might it be that those who want to insist on Mediterranean coast have some bias against it being black Africans? This seems plausible to me, but it'd take more than I know to say for sure. I do know that ethnocentic thinking is often a human way of supporting biases.
Yeah, the Phoenicians were great travelers. It isn't hard for me to imagine that they acquired some of their knowledge from many places, including central or southern Africa rather than vice versa.
I thought YT required that all videos either contained a "holier than thou" attitude by the narrator or repeating narrative of mega-conspiracies involving religion, wealth, ruling the world by aliens.
Maybe the evidence of early African iron working is being suppressed by the systemicly racist governments of the world? It's pretty clear archaeologists are just a group of white males trying to hold onto their view of history at the expense of other races. How's that? :D
My point( which I admit is vague) us how intriguing and pleasantly addicting Stephen Milo's content is without the " junk food for the brain" that more popular but inaccurate hosts that like to omit key facts to push nonsense seem to think people want and algorithm rewards for some reason...but my gosh...the truth is always more interesting to me (and I am guessing many of yall feel the same)
Just watched Christopher Roy's 104 min video on iron smelting (and forging) in Burkina Faso using the traditional technique. They used charcoal made from a special kind of hardwood, which looked to me as if it was from dead trees: so maybe there you have the problem of "old wood."
@@paulrevere365 Developing carbon steel before anyone else is primitive?, construction the largest adobe earthen structure that trumps Arabia is primitive?, monopolizing all trans-saharan trade for 200 years is primitive? Making two voyages to the Americas is primitive? We are analyzing history, not being "woke". Take your shitty politics out of here
@@paulrevere365 Well my point was not about them but about you. I could ask you to prove your point but clearly you are incapable of reading. Well enjoy your bigotry. Enjoyed the mud wresting but I have more interesting things to do -- ie, almost anything else which doesn't involve you.
Copper working isn’t a prerequisite but, I would say it’s a likely precursor. Since a heat source is required, and if you already are working with one....
There was a time when humans thought the Earth was the center of the universe, and now (with time and increased knowledge) we know better. Right now because of which places have actual evidence from archeological excavation I feel we are seeing the same thing but that one day (with time and increased knowledge) we will know better.
During the great age of invention, there were often multiple claims of primacy for various inventions. Science and technology are additive. That is, breakthroughs are often not the result of the single intuition of a single individual, but the end result of a series of smaller breakthroughs over time that provide the "environment" for multiple individuals in multiple locations to have enough intuition to put the pieces together for the great invention.
Out of all the Continents, all of the Civilisations, places and history, Africa is definitely the one i know the least of, i need to learn more about it, so i’m binging videos about it and i found this, and that’s how i got here.
"intermediate copper stage" ... What we call now "iron" is almost all the time mild steel. Iron was not that big an advantage even over stone, it was soft, and oxidized like crazy and required a lot of work. Bronze was preferred for a long time because it was easier to work and did not rust, and good bronze could keep a harder edge than iron, the only problem it had it was very expensive: there were very few sources of tin/arsenic/zinc etc. Iron won the popularity contest only because there is a lot of iron available if you don't mind the backbreaking work to process the low grade ores.
I heard an interesting question and I would like to hear opinions on this. You know how 200,000 years ago when Homo Sapiens emerged in Africa, there were other hominids in the world such as Naledi, Erectus, Denisovans... Is it possible that one day a new Homo species will emerge and live on Earth with Homo Sapiens? The same way Homo Sapiens lived among those others?
We're going to continue evolving of course. I don't think we will split into different species again though because that would require isolation and we're more interconnected than ever. Unless civilization collapses and never comes back we won't split. Who knows what will happen though. We could be hit by an asteroid tomorrow.
Yeah! Gene modification babyyyyyy. CRISPR for life! If we really want, we can modify ourselves and create homo sapiens subspecies that are better suited for the environment they are living. This ain't sci-fi! We can start it today! I'm talking about taking genes of Sherpas with amazing lung capacity, I'm talking about that Italian village that has mutation which makes them immune to heart attacks(these villagers live to 100 years). I'm talking about taking genes of smartest people alive. Transhuman modifications like underwater breathing and wings are so fking cool! I want my gills dammit! I want to be a Homo Atlanteanus! Although this kind of gene editing will open a can of worms. It's like eugenics so majority of people are against it. For instance, we want to eradicate genetic diseases by gene editing, when will we stop? Some people with "diseases" are very okay with their condition and they can participate in society. I mean we can eradicate people with dwarfism and down syndrome but who are we to decide what kind of people deserve life?
@@StefanMilo Self segregation and personal selection amongst groups might do it... Gene manipulation is another angle... Here's me thinking of Iain M Banks Culture novels.
Yes, but not on Earth. People who go to Mars will need to either return to Earth frequently, stay there forever, or perhaps undergo weeks or months of training in a centrifuge. In low gravity your bone mass reduces, eventually returning to Earth would be fatal. So assuming there is a permanent settlement on Mars those settlers would naturally become very isolated from the rest of the species because they would only be able to breed with people who came to Mars or a Mars-gravity spacestation. Note: I'm not saying the low gravity would affect their DNA, and be passed on to their kids, and that it would directly cause speciation; although the low gravity would probably affect the growth of their kids quite a lot.
Firstly, Thanks a million for your excellent videos Stefan! Re your 13:00 question why wasn't iron working happening IN the Sahara? A question that sprang to my mind is - 'what fuel is available in the Sahara that can provide enough heat for long enough periods? Coal or Charcoal? Neither of which are exactly in abundant supply within the Sahara, but plentiful supply north and south of the Sahara.
Sub-saharan Africans were making carbon steel when the only other furnace in the world that could reach that heat was a place in Sri Lanka that was powered by geothermal energy aka a volcanic furnace
I recently and accidentally fell on your videos Stefan and find you very interesting and fascinating. I look forward to watching all past work. Excellent stuff. Thank you!
In a museum in London I saw cast-iron statuettes from west Africa. looked at the dates, and did a double-take. To make the statuettes they were pouring liquid iron into moulds. BEFORE Europe was able to get iron hot enough to do better than Wootz metal!
Iron't you glad I made this video?
Check out From Nothing's: th-cam.com/video/3wP9dES2dkM/w-d-xo.html
& Ollie Bye's: Not finished yet but I'll update this soon.
Love it!!
Yes!!! Some tin wrong though. Your puns are bad.. Iron mine worse than yours? Steel you try....
As a Serbian I really wish we invest more in Vinca. There are so many discoveries that could be made there.
Boooooo
The Irn Bru and Daddie's sauce helped
Africa of the antiquity is so interesting. Outside of Egypt, Carthage, and Nubia not much is really known for non history nerds
The city states in the Horn are pretty well known, no?
@@TaariikhdaAfrika No.
@@OkurkaBinLadin I thought most people with even the slightest bit of interest in trade in antiquity would know of them. Not to even mention D'mt and the succeeding Aksumite Kingdom that was very much up and running in antiquity, I'd say they're pretty well known.
@@TaariikhdaAfrika to you but most westerners bought the racist drivel of colonialism and savages and still believe it till now so the concept of advanced African civilisations other than Egypt is straight up heresy to them
Kinda irritates me when people think Egypt and Nubia as the only civilizations worth mentioning. When will they mention that fucking Mansa Musa, the richest man in history spent so much gold in Egypt that he fucking destroyed their economy for an entire decade!?
The problem with iron artifacts is that it becomes very hard very quickly to get well preserved iron samples from older time periods. For example: Bronze artifacts from ~2000 BCE are sometimes better preserved than iron artifacts from ~1200 CE.
Yes, but the slag from the production process would still be preserved
@@lukasgaizauskas1127
Yes but slag won't tell you who used the iron or where it went.
@Marty Magpie
Not true if there is a lot of it.
@@amenrakwamehotepporchprima9307
The kind of dryness needed to stop iron from rusting over thousands of years is pretty rare on earth and also not coincidentally occur in areas where very few people live if at all. iron rusts very easily.
@@amenrakwamehotepporchprima9307
North Africa and the sahara region where people live aren't that dry. Look at the iron stuff used in those places. A lot of rusting still happens. Less than that of humid areas of course, but it isn't negligible and will eat up the iron over a thousand years.
6 iron artifacts that were found. Many could've been made, most lost. And besides those 6(or 2) were made in early days. Its not like nobody made anything from iron in later more recent times. As no. of iron artifacts increased those 6(2) would've become not so valuable.
Of those 33% that are desert about a third is the cold desert of antarctica. The total desert surface area is about 18,911,884 sq. mi. The total area of antarctic desert is 5,405,000 sq. mi. A little less than 1/3 rd of the total desert surface.
No matter which side of the argument you are on, it's clear that there needs to be research and excavations in Africa. It's really cool to learn more about the iron age on the continent of Africa.
Like a lot of "arguments" these days, almost no one is on the "other" side. It's just the same boring cliches thrown about.
Scientists of all branches of learning have been mining every corner of society and the planet looking for information and answers. No one serious is leaving out any particular group, race, culture, etc. in the pursuit of knowledge.
@@warrennyexactly they aren’t being left out. Also if a bunch of people went there and started digging and Hod forbid they were white?!? 😂 they’d be racist. Also everyone’s all about the western world leaving everyone alone. So they can do it themselves. Why doesn’t Africa discover its own history if it wants to? I doubt they need or want any help. Any help will be highly scrutinized and I doubt anyone wants to open that can of worms in todays world
@@warrenny It's not that the scientists want to leave out Africa it's that large parts of Africa are inaccessible without adequate roads, and in the case of the Central African Republic, dangerous. Also, communication is way more limited, while someone stumbling across the remains of an ancient village would likely be reported on by that person in Europe, a similar situation in Africa may simply never reach the rest of the world simply due to lack of communication, especially in the central African Republic.
@@Garmin21111 actually my assertion is that people have these cliched ideas that scientists are biased against Africa. When in actuality, scientists are very interested in Africa.
So I agree with you that any work not being done anywhere in the world is usually due to lack of accessibility to the regions whether it be political or logistical.
You think they were in the Iron Age, then they what,,, never kept it up? Inventions run in a linear fashion. Why would we look for something when the people are still there and weren’t making anything
A wonderful surprise to wake up to
I went to sleep to history time 🙌🏼
You say that to all the history channels
@@StefanMilo m.th-cam.com/video/Y1kFKvhLAtU/w-d-xo.html
A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one
fancy seeing u here
When I get kicked out of the house and have to sleep in the car, I also pretend I just wanted to see the sunrise.
:(
Time to get a new girlfriend mate
@@amenrakwamehotepporchprima9307 oi bloke how many broads named "Peter" do ya know????
@@prettylights8873 Maybe they were talking about assuming what kind of love interests Peter has? 🤔
@@TahtahmesDiary nah, was definitely referring to the "mate" bit.
Amazing content as usual man. Love it alot and perfect compliment to my mapping part of this collaboration.
Your videos sent me here! Thanks for all of your videos.
@@amenrakwamehotepporchprima9307 There's never a shortage of content to produce from African history.
I your videos! :D
1:43 That’s fine. Emperors beat kings.
I wouldn't ever insult you by calling you a king.
How are you everywhere?
@Franky Padilla Emperor Tigerstar, he seems to comment in like half the videos I watch.
@@zachfreeman2502 He's the Emperor. Can't escape his rule.
@Franky Padilla Nah, rock flies right through paper!
What a man smashing out all these interesting videos! I've been struggling with sleep recently, and I say this in the nicest possible sense, your videos are fantastic to have on if I can't get to sleep. They are wonderfully calming and if I still can't sleep, at least I'm learning about some fascinating topics. Thank you for your hard work and big love to you Stefan!
if you speak at least 1 foreign language, try counting. 1 in your first language, then 2 in a foreign one and so on.
I had to use this method twice (yeah, I sleep well in general), and I don't remember reaching 40 (Hungarian, English, German)
@@istvansipos9940 I do it with the alphabet backwards and forwards in all the languages I know
Pottery was the first manmade material. To make pottery you need high heat, a kiln. Mess around with high heat for long enough you notice its effects on various other raw materials besides clay. So where ever pottery is produced given enough time and curiosity metallurgy follows.
Then basically metallurgy could have begun with the Jomon. Personally I think one of the first copper ages could well have been in the Lake Superior region due to the generous amounts of nearly pure float copper.
The same thing could be said about gold. Smelting gold takes some pretty high temperatures as well. Iron spear and axe points were very valuable and useful. Anybody that knew how to make them could get rich very fast. The message would spread widely and quickly.
@@Eidolon1andOnly
If they have glaze on the pottery they've got kilns. One thing I think societies need to make the jump to metals is a readily accessible and workable source of metal. And that really only works with things like float copper and iron nickel meteors without smelting.
That makes a lot of sense
I love that theory… it gives you a really good picture of a guy who got his kiln too hot one day and found all these weird shiny inclusions in his pottery where copper melted out of copper ore embedded in the clay.
Now they try to reproduce it… no good. Get more clay from that one spot where they first time came from and then it works… but only on windy days… they just keep experimenting and refining until they discover how to reproduce it consistently. THEN they discover they can work the metal.
I really love the way your theory plays in my mind… it means that there’s a continuous line from the first potter to the last iron-age metalworker!
I just couldn't grasp this radio carbon dating time gap issue until I saw that metal horses head with a fairly light tiarra and it all just magically fell into place
When it comes to Africa, the outside world always comes at it with the highest levels of doubt, skepticism and underestimation, even when Africa produces good evidence on par with other regions of the world.
Absolutely. Invention of Writing (the writing system in use in the world today) is placed doubt in favour of borrowing from Sumer far away when the Sumerian cuneiform is different from the sound-system invented in Sudan (Ta Seti), the Hieroglyaphics used in Kush and Egypt.
The African writing system (often called Egyptian by Europeans) commenced in the same millenia 3,320BC as the Sumerian cuneiform.
Absolutely sir. In almost every area of significance this attitude is always present…
I actually use West African iron technology to make this exact point in my world history class.
Yep.
@@ohlangeni TH-cam-- Ancient African Writing Scripts or Systems. West Africans had this invention.
In science, if you've had an idea, most likely someone else has as well.
So it's entirely possible, maybe even likely, that just like calculus, iron working was invented more than once, in more than one place.
Convergent innovation!
It almost certainly was. Writing was developed independently multiple times, as was agriculture, among many different innovations.
Convergent...
@@coffeeabernethy2823 absolutely
Correct, just like the morphic field. There's a field of knowledge that organisms of the same species can tap into and sort of download information from, independently at different geographical locations.
Thank you for this video! African archeology is criminally ignored.
Bullshit. Many highly sophisticated European cultures are also neglected, such as the Danubian Civilization.
@@visaodissidente5560 Okay? Didn’t say they weren’t.
@@YaBoiDREX The weird paranoid reflex some folks have when it comes to anything concerning Africa or 'duh blacks'
I think Egypt and Sudan are in Africa
@@visaodissidente5560 bro calm down 😭😭
It's not the age of the wood that matters but how you wiggle your stick.
this knowledge can cause quite a situation in the carbon dating department
"the older the wood the etter the heat"
I don't know what if they had the first iron age but they certainly have the oldest mine which is the Ngwenya mine on Bomvu Ridge. It goes back to 40,000 years.
idk, the oldest use of iron is there. But it was just used for art not tools or weapons. I believe they traded iron mask to other places.
edit: oldest use of iron that we know of as of late. we could find older iron stuff in another place
You may not like it, but this is what peak archeology looks like
So you're saying there's nowhere to go, but down from here. Is that good or bad?
@@marcv2648 How is he saying theres no way to go but down?
@@romariocoffie4702 Because he said peak. There is nowhere higher than peak. It's only downhill after that.
@@marcv2648 more history channel episodes
Peak UNESCO sponsored political "archeology" that was looking for a set answer before they awarded their study.
What a fucking joke.
As usual Stefan, I thoroughly enjoyed this video. I have been watching your videos for quite some time now and wanted to take the time to thank you for all your time and effort involved in sharing such interesting information with the world. I am fairly new to TH-cam and you were one of the first channels that I subscribed to. I can't thank you enough, for reawakening my insatiable thirst for all scientific knowledge! 👍
Thanks that's very kind. I try my best
@@StefanMilo 👌
Hi, I too love learning about hominins of the past. I am interested in neuroscience and artificial intelligence. If you wish, I would like to connect with you
This had to come out right when I don't have time to watch it didn't it
HONESTLY
that's fine, it's absurd revisionism.
@@levitatingoctahedron922 What specifically is revisionist?
@@levitatingoctahedron922
What’s revisionist about it?
@@averongodoffire8098 I already shared the relevant historiography the first time it was asked but my comment was censored. If you want unbiased historical information this is not the channel.
The use of Irn Bru constantly throughout this video made me more happy than it should. This was so interesting, I love when topics challenge preconceived ideas/stuff we just assume is fact!
Irn Bru?
@@rooknado A soft drink from Scotland. It's sickly sweet, but otherwise tastes fine.
Saw a video of traditional African iron smelters making a mud furnace, collecting red soil (iron ore) and gathering village strong men to pump the bellows for days to get iron bloom for their farming tools.. thought perhaps early metal producing cultures just used ore of what was readily available.. copper producers had copper ore.. iron producers had iron ore..
th-cam.com/video/RuCnZClWwpQ/w-d-xo.html
Poetry is a reasonable precursor to iron. Potters could have accidentally smelted crude iron in kilns then developed the technology to work it.
Poetry, my favorite precursor to iron.
Yet irony is wasted sans pottery
By the end of your first sentence, I was super excited to read whatever poetry you were gonna come up with, Douglas lololol 😅😂
Poetry stirs the heart, inflamed passions lead to conflict, conflict drives ironworking for weapons of war. Makes total sense, even if it was an autocorrect typo.
I confess, I've left my own autocorrect misplaced words in a post. Sometimes the change would give it a flavor that tickled my fancy.
"There's many a truth in misspelled words." - S. Freud, (Or he should have said that!)
That was really interesting. I have long had a feeling that many technologies developed independently at different times and places.
A perfect example is the antikythera mechanism. This required a very high level of knowledge of maths, astronomy and mechanics plus the skills in metalwork to produce it. All of that was lost and had to be re-invented centuries later.
Thanks for explaining the basics so clearly. Also, your video makes me realize how much I really know about African history. Thanks for the links.
It's remarkable that you managed to bring this type of dense and esoteric debate to an popular platform like TH-cam. Keep it up!
Since I am too poor to send money I’m definitely going to share and like this video it’s absolutely awesome! Thank you for everything you do!
Thank you, may Oggun (the deity of Iron) of Western Africa protect you 💚
It sounds like a random word in Yoruba rather than some other West African language
@@jobwesleycoxjr5103 it does, it is.
@@jobwesleycoxjr5103 it is a Yoruba god (Nigeria) the idiot that made the comment knows nothing of africa except it’s a “west African god@
Barsuayo Ogum’
There is a good read published by George Celis 1991 on the last bloomeries in Africa. The technology presented there is so strikingly different from what we know today from the early iron workings in Mesopotamia, that it truly looks like being a native invention especially in western Africa.
It definitely is a native invention.
Currently reading _Ancient Africa Metallurgy: The Socio-Cultural Context_ to really get a good grasp on the history, dating, methods, dates, etc. of how Africa’s Iron Age started, but the book also discusses much about Copper which is an abundant resource Kansanshi, Akjoujt, Nouakchott, Khatt Lemaiteg, and the Tigidit cliff, Eghazer basin & Azawagh valley surrounded by the Aïr mountains... Copper is extremely abundant in Africa, and much of it has been found at ancient grave sites like Anyokan, Asaquru, Wasadan, Tuluk, Ingombe Ilede, etc.
The book is now a personal favorite of mine...
13:05
Its 2020, the pandemic has hit so hard that our favorite youtube is forced to use a plastic spoon as a mic.
"Captains Log."
What? He's got a "new" mic spoon? What happened to the old tiny white plastic spoon? What sort of cruel swine breaks the Sacred SpoonoMic baton/mace/fasci, an object crucial to our as yet un-named cult of Milo Info Cargo. This has to stop
Na, that's just standard Stefan Milo. 2020 Milo now eats bacon sandwiches in the rain at a park.
Truly a golden nugget on TH-cam right here. Keep up the good work lad and never lose sight on what makes you whole and only work on what’s makes you happy.
Got proof?
“I know this is an archeology channel but the memes should be fresh”
That’s a man I can get behind.
I love this kind of stuff
6:14, the old wood problem is something unique to North American contexts and does not apply to iron furnace technology. For iron making, only specific species of wood with certain properties appropriate to making charcoal are carefully selected to use in furnaces.
... I messed around with "ornamental metals" for a while, made "knife-like objects" as well. One thing I noticed about the serious, skilled practitioners is that they were ALWAYS experimenting with materials and techniques. I have no problem conceptually with "smith-shamans/wizards/mages" discovering and spreading their art through apprenticeships and the like. (Drawing the "sword from the stone" may be an elaborate metaphor for smithcraft...)
If you have time, you can find that in Serbia they found iron needle, discovered on the site in 2002, is considered to be one of the oldest surviving metallic objects on the planet. It was made from the stainless iron, without any hollows. It is 64.5 cm (25.4 in) long and dated to the 14th century BC (c.1300 BC). It considered a technological wonder even by modern standards as iron of such purity hardly can be produced even today. It is 98,86% pure iron and apparently can't rust.
There's a great video on West African iron smelting using the old methods. The whole village participates.
When I was in africa ivory coast...the villages made their own iron in a clay tower about 8 ft tall. Seemed one could make iron by mistake with the method of a clay oven. Just put a iron oxide lump in or the iron rich soil and hot fire and I bet Iron was around a lot longer than thought,
@@rodpaget9796
I'm sure it was accidentally discovered several times, but I'm baffled who figured out to keep reheating and hammering the bloom after they got their pool of copper. That's a metric butt ton of hard work.
My dad was a metallurgical engineer and he had a copy of Herbert Hoover's translation of De Re Metallica by Agricola. It was published in 1556. It might have some ideas...
@@IvorMektin1701 Everything ancient peoples did was hard work. Hard work was never a barrier for them.
@@MrBottlecapBill
Hard work without an apparent benefit.
@@IvorMektin1701 I think we sometimes over think the developments at times. it would not surprise me that the smith was bored and just hammered the bloom while hot because lets face it, you would too, and noticed a interesting change. Maybe one guy, maybe generations of dicking about with bloom led to the discovery of iron.
Great stuff man, you never fail to make good content!
Having an exam in archaeometallurgy in two days, perfect timing for this video :-)
I hope you didn't rely on this, and actually read some BOOKS?!
@@lolazal1 Lol of course, just complimentary to what I was studying :P
>
- Pringle, Heather. "Seeking Africa's First Iron Men" (PDF). Science. p. 2.
- Holl, Augustin F. C. (June 2020). "The Origins of African Metallurgies". Oxford Research Encyclopedias. 22 (4): 415-438.
*Below are lectures (which can be found on youtube) by Professor Chris Ehret (University of California)*
Ancient Africa in world history: Innovation, Invention, and Impact
Lecture by Chris Ehret (University of California)
Africanity of Ancient Egypt
Lecture by Chris Ehret (University of California)
Thank you!
Another banger! Hope we can get something on West African Hominins one day
Saw thew original documentary about two years ago, and they actually did the smelting in a clay kiln...( Of course they did a lot of ancestral worship and before the actual smelting )
But when I saw that hot, molten iron flowing out of that clay kiln, I was flabbergasted!
When I was in africa ivory coast...the villages made their own iron in a clay tower about 8 ft tall. Seemed one could make iron by mistake with the method of a clay oven. Just put a iron oxide lump in or the iron rich soil lump or two, charcoal, and hot fire and I bet Iron was around a lot longer than thought,
@Shane Ashby Not at all the smelting techniques in many of African societies that produced Iron tools/weapons were very advanced were not surpassed until European industrial revolution.
@Shane Ashby yes that is the case my historically inept friend..there are even some African cultures that produced steel thousands of years before steel was a thing but that's a subject still being studied...imagine being so bias in 2020 my god....
Iron is in fact very difficult to process, no one 'makes it by mistake' in a clay oven, to think someone could betrays a complete lack of knowledge of metallurgy. There's a reason the Bronze Age happened centuries earlier than the Iron Age in the Mediterranean; and on Cyprus, the main source of Mediterranean copper for centuries, iron ores occur naturally mixed right in with the copper ores, yet for centuries the Cypriots just discarded the iron slag and never bothered developing the process for refining it, in part b/c it's so much more complicated than that for copper.
@@almishti
Look up Bog Iron and get back to me....I saw what the africans did first hand in an area of dirt that was almost iron ore.....I am not talking about damascus steel either....
th-cam.com/video/nawCa-4dWgY/w-d-xo.html
There is a very interesting book called “the lightning bird“. Among many other things
it elaborates on the use of iron ochre ( the blood of the earth)as body paint in south Africa, with evidence of it’s mining up to (if I’m remembering g correctly) 20,000 years ago. It seems that this would have put them in a perfect position to transition to an iron age
Very convenient! I was just looking into this!
I know my ancestors were already working copper for a while before developing iron working as soon as shipwrecks from Asia started landing on the coast of British Columbia in the 1800's.
A very cool Tlingit short sword from Alaska is made from meteoric iron.
Are you haida?
Awesome video as always. I've seen all your videos a few times. I've had a head injury and can't remember what I've watched,so no one in my house will watch anything with me anymore. So I watch stuff over and over like it's the first time I've seen it. Keep up the good work
You're the man, brate! Thank you for the content. Brilliant as always.
A new Stefan Milo video? You had better steel yourself, The dad jokes are going to come thick and fast. Iron see my myself out.
Oh, the irony!
Some Europeans assumed Africans couldn't have invented iron-smelting. Would it be 'ironic' if we eventually discover that Africa invented it first? Perhaps this isn't a 'ferric' good joke.
My God,
That should get you banned from this channel
@@akata7644 hater
you are one of my absolute favorite channels. youve taught me so much about my favorite topic. thank you
I think your focus on archaeology entitles you to excavate old memes
Ha, I was writing a comment about how ceramic production is hypothesized to have lead to the discovery of metal working, then got to the section where you talk about it. Great video!
Good video.
But I noticed one very important mistake:
2:43 "Scottish soft drinks are made from iron".
They're actually made from the two main things you find in Scotland.
Shortbread and heroin.
What about the iron being used as practice material for students since it was first considered worthless? Would make good use of mistakes when fire got to hot.
I've been an AMATEUR metallurgist for years... and watching this video, the penny FINALLY dropped as to why cast iron is so brittle and wrought iron is a totally different thing to that.
Yes I must be a bit of a dullard... but still... thanks for the simple explanation that even I can grasp. ;)
Good morning anthropology peeps, gotta love waking up to my boy Milo
One thing that might mitigate the "old wood" problem for the central african finds is examining charcoal burning methods in that region in the present. Charcoal burning is likely one of humanities most ancient industries, and the methods do not change much with the passage of time. Growing up in West Africa, I often saw charcoal burners as a kid, and was shocked to find that the methods used in places in Eastern Europe are incredibly similar. It would stand to reason that methods in heavily forested areas in particular, such as central africa, would hardly change at all over centuries or even millenia. If charcoal burners prefer certain trees, it could give some clues to exactly how old wood used for charcoal could be.
Yeah, the fact that people citing old wood problem don't do more research to confirm shows they are more concerned about proving the consensus than getting to facts.
I thought this was a spoon mic channel. Now I know about ancient Iron working. Miss you buddy!
Once again outstanding thoroughly done research.. unbiased and thought provoking keeping an open mind..keep on keeping on sir..thank you for sharing intersting info..have a better one
Spoon-mic appears at 12:15
Thanks for a solid and entertaining intro to the topic!
West Africa to me was the cradle of Sub-Saharan African civilizations like Greco-Rome was to Europe, bringing agriculture, metallurgy, science, pottery, seafaring, etc throughout the rest of the continent. The largest, most powerful, and earliest empires existed in West Africa, of course not neglecting the many achievements and civilizations found in other regions of Africa.
Was it though? Proto indo europeans probably came from the steppes in todays Ukraine..
I was talking about greco-romans being cradle of european civilazation btw. Celts had seafearing, metals etc. So had the nordic bronze age too, and I believe several other european cultures that was not greco-romans.
@@HansenFT That was the minoans.
Wrong. Cheikh Anta Diop proved that Kemet-Kush (Egypt & Sudan) plays that role for africa. On the linguistic part, he made a comparison between ancient kemet language and Wolof, and the words are almost the same. Other others did the same with ancient egyptian language. Ask chatgbt it will tell you.
Very Great Video Milo! Looking forward to watching the rest of you're catalog. 💖
When we gonna upgrade to netherite?
IT DOES MOT EXIST IN REAL LIFE, NEVER!!!!
@@jaspertenberge1730 If Lapis Lazuli is real than anything can be real bro. Lapis literally enchants things and yet it exists irl how come?
i'd like to take this opportunity to admire your choice of single malt whisky.
Agree! 🤓🥃🍺
I hope the look of the geography has been taken into account here. A slightly different geography, weather patterns, and any additional research into cultural evolution and genetics of surrounding areas could prove to be essential in figuring this out. Where people lived, how they lived at differents times, what the waterways and land looked like back when in relation to trade, etc.
The Haya people in modern Tanzania invented some high quality steel, the likes we did not see until the 19th century. They invented the method themselves given that no other culture had that skill. So obviously te creativty exists there.
This is a massive exaggeration.
@@bdelectr7411 Saying something does not make it true. Explain...
Thank you for saying "I don't know." Rare to hear.
I love the plastic spoon mic! Great informative vid! 😘😘
I need your stale memes. I have a stale sense of humor.
You're making great videos, with good work on the sources. Your humility always serves your point, it's great to follow your channel and i am glad to have discovered it [recently (nonetheless, i've already watched tons of it)]
Meroe is usually pronounced “Me-ro-way”.
Always pleased to have an unlatched Stefan Milo video appear in my feed. Thanks for well researched presentations
Unwatched not unlatched
I still find the racialized geo-political categorizing of Egypt as the “East” as inaccurate. Worse, is the near consistent removal of Nubian Kingdoms of Kush & Axum from the conversations of East-North Africa. (& the usage of the word “sub Saharan”)
The term “Subsaharan” is one I’m surprised hasn’t gone out of style yet. We don’t refer to land south of the Gobi desert as the “Sub-gobi region” for example. This goes back to the colonial examinations of African history. It’s meant to divide North Africa from the rest of Africa in a failed attempt to commandeer the splendid history of Egypt, Carthage, etc.. Classic divide and conquer strategy. It’s our job as history nuts to challenge these very outdated notions and usher in a new era of historical research. One that sees the African continent as a primer location for humanities many civilizations.
I still find the term ‘sub-Saharan’ (used to describe those countries that are not part of North Africa) more adequate than the previous ‘Black Africa’, common during the 19th century and the Western world. But there’s no way to content everyone.
@@DulceN It's not a very useful at all. Why separate North Africa from the rest of Africa like it's some sort of island? Why not exclude the desert regions of Southern Africa from other parts of the continent? Why single out North Africa? As a person from Sahara/Sahel Africa, there has always been a connection between our Northern relatives of the coast as well as our Southern relatives of the tropics. But non-Africans seem to pigeonholed us often to segregate the history our ancestors had built. It bothers me a lot.
I just turned 71 it’s late at night mid June and I can’t stop watching your videos your voice your intelligence and you’re willing to say I don’t know but this is my evidence is quite profound keep on Truckin
The _reason that Africa has less_ archeological excavations is worth mentioning, think.
Archeology is a luxury. _Largely due to European colonialism_ ongoing to this day, there is an enormous amount of avoidable human suffering. It would immoral to direct labor efforts to luxuries like archeology while people are starving. We can expect archeology to become a higher priority for Africans when their natural resources are spent improving their own lives instead of increasing the wealth of neo-colonial owners.
It's pretty clear that Tut had an iron blade in his tomb. Which means........they at least had a working knowledge of how to work metals(iron) in the 1324 BCish era. Just because it was from a meteor doesn't mean they didn't need to know how to craft it. Meteors rarely fall in the shape of a knife blade. Or at least a few people of the time knew. I have to assume these people knew what meteors looked like before that and would have kept their eyes open for them as valuable resources(maybe for centuries). If this is the case, it's only a matter of time until they found a source of natural iron. The rust colour is a dead give away. From there the whole iron working age starts. Easy peasy, sort of. I suspect if you look at the oldest iron working sites you'll also find the easiest to access sources of ore. Something visible to the eye as iron and chunky. Maybe a huge ancient impact crater? I know in my area I've often picked up rocks thinking they were meteors only to find out they were large chunks of natural iron. I suspect easy to access sources of iron were more abundant and easier to salvage than sources of copper so I see no reason one would need a working knowledge of copper smelting first although it would have helped......pottery is a lot older than metal working and firing pottery is nearly the same process. We also have to understand iron artifacts rust away much quicker than copper. It's possible they were using it far longer than anyone has imagined, but the evidence is just gone.
Excellent deductions.
As you said, King Tuts dagger is a meteorite, which they cold worked. It was not made by smithing.
I don’t think you can cold-work iron, though?
@@lindenshepherd6085 Sure you can, just hammer it.
@@neutralfellow9736 I've worked in a forge for a while, and I was always warned against cold-working iron because it expends far more energy than its worth if you can heat it up in any way, and depending on the carbon content it could just break. Brittle iron doesn't take well to hammering.
i mean west africans did independently create their own form of farming and agriculture so most likely yea
@Graf von Losinj and why not?
@@Robbiekilljoy69 I would definitely. If not at least we know that the west African ethnic groups definitely didn’t get their metallurgy from outsiders.
@Graf von Losinj "stone to metal working is a ridiculous jump", and by that you mean only a jump that non-Africans could make? Or perhaps plastic working served as the stepping stone for other people?
@Graf von Losinj wrong that migration was to eastern Africa.
Fantastic channel. I've spent an entire day watching your amazing content. Something to keep me company during lockdown.
A lot of archaeological campaigns in Africa were cut short or outright abandoned starting in 1980 when there suddenly was way to much "biblical archaeology" and eurocentric excavations. In subsaharan Africa archaeologists tended to focus on early hominids. This was more a bias and funding shift not black and white or on/off but funding for archaeological campaigns in Africa was hard to come by thereafter.
Wow this was interesting but I did spot one majorly (and one minor) egregious fault: that bacon sandwich seemed to be soggy with rain😮, how dare you sir!
The incorrect brand of Brown Sauce can be overlooked because at least it's still the appropriate condiment.
It's frustrating that the Sahara and Sahel cover up so much history, b/c it's easy to forget that a few thousand years ago, much of Africa was quite watery - opening up more water passages and an abundance of woods, plus other flora and fauna today not seen in the region. I hope within my lifetime, Africa will settle down from so much intermittent conflict, then archaeologists and even businesses can migrate to the region. We'd learn so much.
You might want to have a look at the latest Corbett Report with whitney Webb( How green finance is monopolizing the planet). They discuss the so-called green future, when in reality the corporate west is busy reintroducing a frightening form of vulture capitalism/colonialism to Africa and South America. Debt will be used to force countries to cede mineral rich regions to western corporations.As to the intermittent conflicts, everything imaginable will be done to keep the flames burning; after all, a week government ruling over a depopulated country cannot interfere with the flow of resources out of the country.
The sahara and sahel don't cover up history, they preserve it. I have thousands of satellite images that proves my point. The problem are the ongoing post-colonial politics.
Without even looking at the video I instantly recognized the Two cimbals on a cliff vid. That stuffs gold!
I wouldn't be surprised at all if iron had multiple starting points. Damn near everything else did, after all. It's got more than a whiff of the lone genius trope to say otherwise. Have archeology types done as much digging around in West Africa as they have in Egypt and the Mesopatamia area?
@De Alvarado I highly doubt they introduced iron in Africa.
@Mr. A. Knight The chariot was primarily used in North Africa or the Sahel Region, not in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is no evidence to support the introduction of ironsmithing or any practice by Eurasians, specifically Carthaginians, he even said it in the video. There have been iron smelting sites throughout Africa dating back as far as 2000 BC, which indicate this method was local or spread by groups such as the Bantu. There was little interaction in terms of travel between Sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world until 600 AD, which began the Trans-Saharan Trade. This issue is also why Great Zimbabwe (despite not being the only stone city in Central Africa) is thought to have been built by Arabs without any evidence backing it up.
@@petergriffin3723 Agree. Except Great Zimbabwe is not thought to have been built by Arabs anymore - it's an old outdated theory - (some thought that in the colonial era, but the evidence has for a while shown the culture and city to have been indigenous).
@@skellagyook Agree, but many Eurocentrists or bigoted people use this outdated theory to further their racial agenda. It's truly sad indeed.
@Mr. A. Knight I don't understand what you're trying to say? Yes, the Roman Empire had contact with West Africa around 100 BC as you said, but that was a thousand years after West Africa began practicing iron-smelting and there is no record of them having introducing metallurgy in that region. Also even if the Carthaginians had contact with West Africa, which they did, there is no evidence that supports the claim that Carthaginians brought the knowledge of metallurgy to West Africa or other regions. The Carthaginians began around 800 BC, and began smelting iron around 500 BC, meanwhile the Nok Culture was practicing iron-smelting since 500 BC or earlier, with older sites such as Obui in Central Africa dating back to 2000 BC. Not saying that you're completely wrong, but there's just not enough evidence to support outside influence, it can only be logical the indigenous people have innovated iron due to the lack of other metals in their respected regions, or could have been introduced by other Sub-Saharan African groups that independently practiced iron-smelting.
I'm so happy when you post man. I love your vids. I also love that every history channel I follow comment on your stuff it's so wholesome
Sounds like West Africa due to its many sites seems most plausible. Might it be that those who want to insist on Mediterranean coast have some bias against it being black Africans? This seems plausible to me, but it'd take more than I know to say for sure. I do know that ethnocentic thinking is often a human way of supporting biases.
Yeah, the Phoenicians were great travelers. It isn't hard for me to imagine that they acquired some of their knowledge from many places, including central or southern Africa rather than vice versa.
@@JanjayTrollface then why there is Iron manufacturing areas in Cameroon, Nigeria and Central Africa date to 2000 BC.
@@MotivateMoments2023 there is
What a wonderful Video.....Thanks Stephan!
I thought YT required that all videos either contained a "holier than thou" attitude by the narrator or repeating narrative of mega-conspiracies involving religion, wealth, ruling the world by aliens.
Maybe the evidence of early African iron working is being suppressed by the systemicly racist governments of the world? It's pretty clear archaeologists are just a group of white males trying to hold onto their view of history at the expense of other races. How's that? :D
Bottlecapbill It’s important to remember that historians =/= politician.
Africa peaked at iron age lmao
My point( which I admit is vague) us how intriguing and pleasantly addicting Stephen Milo's content is without the " junk food for the brain" that more popular but inaccurate hosts that like to omit key facts to push nonsense seem to think people want and algorithm rewards for some reason...but my gosh...the truth is always more interesting to me (and I am guessing many of yall feel the same)
Just watched Christopher Roy's 104 min video on iron smelting (and forging) in Burkina Faso using the traditional technique. They used charcoal made from a special kind of hardwood, which looked to me as if it was from dead trees: so maybe there you have the problem of "old wood."
'Scottish soft drinks' - had to laugh out loud!- Then you actually drank some!
Dude! Love the way you present your material. Laugh so much at your turn of phrase. As a Brit living in the States, it is refreshing. Bravo!
i love that there is such a debate. hopefully it will refocus attention on an overlooked but fascinating swathe of cultures and their histories
@@paulrevere365 Ummm...no, that's exactly the word that is least appropriate
@@paulrevere365 I see: your def is boring = primitive. Very primitive perspective.
@@paulrevere365
Developing carbon steel before anyone else is primitive?, construction the largest adobe earthen structure that trumps Arabia is primitive?, monopolizing all trans-saharan trade for 200 years is primitive? Making two voyages to the Americas is primitive? We are analyzing history, not being "woke". Take your shitty politics out of here
@@paulrevere365 Well my point was not about them but about you. I could ask you to prove your point but clearly you are incapable of reading. Well enjoy your bigotry. Enjoyed the mud wresting but I have more interesting things to do -- ie, almost anything else which doesn't involve you.
@@paulrevere365 If they used iron, then how were they stuck in the stone age?
Copper working isn’t a prerequisite but, I would say it’s a likely precursor. Since a heat source is required, and if you already are working with one....
There was a time when humans thought the Earth was the center of the universe, and now (with time and increased knowledge) we know better. Right now because of which places have actual evidence from archeological excavation I feel we are seeing the same thing but that one day (with time and increased knowledge) we will know better.
During the great age of invention, there were often multiple claims of primacy for various inventions. Science and technology are additive. That is, breakthroughs are often not the result of the single intuition of a single individual, but the end result of a series of smaller breakthroughs over time that provide the "environment" for multiple individuals in multiple locations to have enough intuition to put the pieces together for the great invention.
Out of all the Continents, all of the Civilisations, places and history, Africa is definitely the one i know the least of, i need to learn more about it, so i’m binging videos about it and i found this, and that’s how i got here.
Sub Saharan Africans literally have no history to speak of....they were fauna until they were shuttled around as slaves...sad really.
UNESCO's general history of Africa, while old is probably the best summary I can recommend
@@davidsquall351 did Odin reveal this to you in a dream as well?.
"intermediate copper stage" ... What we call now "iron" is almost all the time mild steel. Iron was not that big an advantage even over stone, it was soft, and oxidized like crazy and required a lot of work. Bronze was preferred for a long time because it was easier to work and did not rust, and good bronze could keep a harder edge than iron, the only problem it had it was very expensive: there were very few sources of tin/arsenic/zinc etc. Iron won the popularity contest only because there is a lot of iron available if you don't mind the backbreaking work to process the low grade ores.
I heard an interesting question and I would like to hear opinions on this. You know how 200,000 years ago when Homo Sapiens emerged in Africa, there were other hominids in the world such as Naledi, Erectus, Denisovans... Is it possible that one day a new Homo species will emerge and live on Earth with Homo Sapiens? The same way Homo Sapiens lived among those others?
We're going to continue evolving of course.
I don't think we will split into different species again though because that would require isolation and we're more interconnected than ever.
Unless civilization collapses and never comes back we won't split. Who knows what will happen though. We could be hit by an asteroid tomorrow.
Yeah! Gene modification babyyyyyy. CRISPR for life!
If we really want, we can modify ourselves and create homo sapiens subspecies that are better suited for the environment they are living. This ain't sci-fi! We can start it today! I'm talking about taking genes of Sherpas with amazing lung capacity, I'm talking about that Italian village that has mutation which makes them immune to heart attacks(these villagers live to 100 years). I'm talking about taking genes of smartest people alive. Transhuman modifications like underwater breathing and wings are so fking cool! I want my gills dammit! I want to be a Homo Atlanteanus!
Although this kind of gene editing will open a can of worms. It's like eugenics so majority of people are against it. For instance, we want to eradicate genetic diseases by gene editing, when will we stop? Some people with "diseases" are very okay with their condition and they can participate in society. I mean we can eradicate people with dwarfism and down syndrome but who are we to decide what kind of people deserve life?
@@StefanMilo Self segregation and personal selection amongst groups might do it... Gene manipulation is another angle... Here's me thinking of Iain M Banks Culture novels.
Yes, but not on Earth.
People who go to Mars will need to either return to Earth frequently, stay there forever, or perhaps undergo weeks or months of training in a centrifuge. In low gravity your bone mass reduces, eventually returning to Earth would be fatal.
So assuming there is a permanent settlement on Mars those settlers would naturally become very isolated from the rest of the species because they would only be able to breed with people who came to Mars or a Mars-gravity spacestation.
Note: I'm not saying the low gravity would affect their DNA, and be passed on to their kids, and that it would directly cause speciation; although the low gravity would probably affect the growth of their kids quite a lot.
Firstly, Thanks a million for your excellent videos Stefan!
Re your 13:00 question why wasn't iron working happening IN the Sahara? A question that sprang to my mind is - 'what fuel is available in the Sahara that can provide enough heat for long enough periods? Coal or Charcoal? Neither of which are exactly in abundant supply within the Sahara, but plentiful supply north and south of the Sahara.
Sub-saharan Africans were making carbon steel when the only other furnace in the world that could reach that heat was a place in Sri Lanka that was powered by geothermal energy aka a volcanic furnace
Ok
I recently and accidentally fell on your videos Stefan and find you very interesting and fascinating. I look forward to watching all past work. Excellent stuff. Thank you!
In a museum in London I saw cast-iron statuettes from west Africa. looked at the dates, and did a double-take. To make the statuettes they were pouring liquid iron into moulds. BEFORE Europe was able to get iron hot enough to do better than Wootz metal!