steel and iron weaponry of the american natives.........

fearn · 4th December 2010, 07:26 PM

According to this Study, to smelt metal on the altiplano, the Spanish had to adopt an indigenous method of channeling the wind into the furnace, since bellows didn't work. I think they did that on Sri Lanka as well? The problem is that most of the metals they were smelting were copper and silver from the mines. From what I've been able to find, bronze technology developed by around 1000 CE in the Andes. It's hard to tell how common bronze production was, but the Inkans did use iron bolts to hold some of their stones together, so it wasn't too rare.

Archeologists think the Precolumbian andean peoples used charcoal and possibly coal as fuels (link). However, the literature is annoying, because the archeologists refer to burned wood in digs as charcoal, and that makes searching for references a bit harder.

So I guess iron smelting would have been possible, but the Andean peoples never got to it. Just one of those things: prior to Columbus, there were more people living in the high Andes than there are now, so I suspect they simply had other priorities, and lots of tough rocks lying around, free for the taking, when they wanted to hit each other with something hard.

Best,

F

4th December 2010, 07:26 PM	#31
fearn Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,247	According to this Study, to smelt metal on the altiplano, the Spanish had to adopt an indigenous method of channeling the wind into the furnace, since bellows didn't work. I think they did that on Sri Lanka as well? The problem is that most of the metals they were smelting were copper and silver from the mines. From what I've been able to find, bronze technology developed by around 1000 CE in the Andes. It's hard to tell how common bronze production was, but the Inkans did use iron bolts to hold some of their stones together, so it wasn't too rare. Archeologists think the Precolumbian andean peoples used charcoal and possibly coal as fuels (link). However, the literature is annoying, because the archeologists refer to burned wood in digs as charcoal, and that makes searching for references a bit harder. So I guess iron smelting would have been possible, but the Andean peoples never got to it. Just one of those things: prior to Columbus, there were more people living in the high Andes than there are now, so I suspect they simply had other priorities, and lots of tough rocks lying around, free for the taking, when they wanted to hit each other with something hard. Best, F Last edited by fearn; 4th December 2010 at 08:19 PM.