|
|
Post by mansamusa on May 6, 2020 21:19:44 GMT -5
Iron working is an independent invention of West Africans from ~5000 BP. ... the African process produces iron and steel from the same kilning. Steel production remained an unknown outside of Africa and India until somewhere between the 14th and 19th centuries. Unlike other continents, or in Meroe itself, iron was shrouded by
mystic underpinnings thought integral to its making yet served
to disable it from further advancements in production, use, and distribution of a kind that led to the industrial age (the Bassari were on their way to overcoming the non- technical limitations). Still, African iron remained the superior product. This iron, or rather carbon steel, was manufactured in furnaces attaining temperatures sometimes exceeding 1800°C (3275°F). It was exported to India where it was used in the synthesis of the famous ukku (wootz) steel for weapons manufacture. Eeeeeeeeee blacksmiths are numerous,
Aaaaaaah but those who can melt iron from stone have grown rare.
Beekillers are many.
Lionhunters are few.
-West African Song Smelters from rock are indeed among THE LAST AFRICANS It was cheaper to import inferior European products. Not only true for iron, but for other things as well. Europe moved onto industrialization leaving Africa in the dust. Mali relied on homemade iron into the 1960s when cheaper to produce European iron took over the free trade market. Forging A Knife From Primitive Iron Age Technology Steel Part 1; 5 minutes Inagina: The Last House of Iron - PREVIEW; 11 minutes Smelting iron in Senufo country; 12 minutes Blacksmiths Working in Forge, Mali, West Africa (Long version); 15 minutes * Black Hephaistos: exploring culture and science in African iron working (1995; 48 mins) Dokwaza: Last of the African Iron Masters (1988; 49 mins) IRON VILLAGE: The Mossi Village of Dablo in Burkina Faso; 56 minutes Smelting Iron in Africa (A DEMONSTRATION); 1 hour 45 minutes Much more @ www.youtube.com/results?search_query=africa+ironThanks for these videos. They are awesome! |
|
|
|
Post by ycoamigofull on May 12, 2020 21:06:54 GMT -5
Iron working is an independent invention of West Africans from ~5000 BP. ... the African process produces iron and steel from the same kilning. Steel production remained an unknown outside of Africa and India until somewhere between the 14th and 19th centuries. Unlike other continents, or in Meroe itself, iron was shrouded by
mystic underpinnings thought integral to its making yet served
to disable it from further advancements in production, use, and distribution of a kind that led to the industrial age (the Bassari were on their way to overcoming the non- technical limitations). Still, African iron remained the superior product. This iron, or rather carbon steel, was manufactured in furnaces attaining temperatures sometimes exceeding 1800°C (3275°F). It was exported to India where it was used in the synthesis of the famous ukku (wootz) steel for weapons manufacture. Eeeeeeeeee blacksmiths are numerous,
Aaaaaaah but those who can melt iron from stone have grown rare.
Beekillers are many.
Lionhunters are few.
-West African Song
Smelters from rock are indeed among THE LAST AFRICANS
It was cheaper to import inferior European products.
Not only true for iron, but for other things as well.
Europe moved onto industrialization leaving Africa in
the dust. Mali relied on homemade iron into the 1960s
when cheaper to produce European iron took over the
free trade market. OK, I can see the cheaper imports, but why did not the Africans move ahead of the Europeans to develop a cheaper iron product? They had all the ores within easy reach, and the African rivers for easy water transport, and the jungle areas to provide easy access to plenty of wood for smelting. And according to djoser-xyyman they were producing on industrial scale. With such big resources why did Europe leave Africa in the dust as you put it above? |
|
|
|
Post by ycoamigofull on May 12, 2020 21:12:40 GMT -5
The advantage of having Africans interested in African history results in this kind of scholarship: "The debate on West African metallurgies cannot be properly understoodwithout reference to the colonial template that featured Africa as the receiving partner inall crucial social, economic, and technological development. The interesting debate thattook place in West Africa during the Colonial Period was more meta-theoretical thanfactual. These conflicting glosses, despite their lack of empirical foundations, have con-strained the nature of archaeological research and oversimplified the dynamics of the manyfacets of technological innovation. The relative boom in archaeological research that tookplace from the 1960s onwards resulted in an exponential growth of factual information.Challenging evidence has emerged from Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, CentralAfrican Republic, Gabon, Togo, and Senegal. The picture that emerges from this surveycalls for more sophisticated explanations for the origins of West African metallurgies awayfrom the single non-African source hypothesis." www.researchgate.net/publication/226180393_Early_West_African_Metallurgies_New_Data_and_Old_OrthodoxyThe info there shows there was independent African invention, and I believe it,, but why was Mali in the 1960s still doing homemade iron, more than a century behind Britain for example, which was building railroads with hard steel and exporting steel and steel foundries as early as the 1800s? |
|
|
|
Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on May 13, 2020 7:38:18 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by mansamusa on May 20, 2020 2:18:17 GMT -5
Is this a game changer for this debate? Radiocarbon Dates Updated Eurocentric critiques often use the excuse of the complication associated with radiocarbon dates to question iron age sites older than Carthage (700 BC), the supposed civilization that taught Black Africans to smelt iron. Alpern |
|
|
|
Post by mansamusa on May 20, 2020 7:48:43 GMT -5
The advantage of having Africans interested in African history results in this kind of scholarship: "The debate on West African metallurgies cannot be properly understoodwithout reference to the colonial template that featured Africa as the receiving partner inall crucial social, economic, and technological development. The interesting debate thattook place in West Africa during the Colonial Period was more meta-theoretical thanfactual. These conflicting glosses, despite their lack of empirical foundations, have con-strained the nature of archaeological research and oversimplified the dynamics of the manyfacets of technological innovation. The relative boom in archaeological research that tookplace from the 1960s onwards resulted in an exponential growth of factual information.Challenging evidence has emerged from Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, CentralAfrican Republic, Gabon, Togo, and Senegal. The picture that emerges from this surveycalls for more sophisticated explanations for the origins of West African metallurgies awayfrom the single non-African source hypothesis." www.researchgate.net/publication/226180393_Early_West_African_Metallurgies_New_Data_and_Old_OrthodoxyThe info there shows there was independent African invention, and I believe it,, but why was Mali in the 1960s still doing homemade iron, more than a century behind Britain for example, which was building railroads with hard steel and exporting steel and steel foundries as early as the 1800s? You are asking why there was no industrial revolution in Africa. The industrial revolution was a unique historical development that occured first in the UK and then the West for a wide and complex variety of reasons that did not exist in Africa. |
|
|
|
Post by mansamusa on May 20, 2020 8:25:35 GMT -5
Is this a game changer for this debate? Radiocarbon Dates Updated Eurocentric critiques often use the excuse of the complication associated with radiocarbon dates to question iron age sites older than Carthage (700 BC), the supposed civilization that taught Black Africans to smelt iron. AlpernTo update: It appears the 300 year discrepancy (2300 to 2600 BP) has been reduced to decades: "Others will use the recalibration to assess environmental events. For example, researchers have been arguing for decades over the timing of the Minoan eruption at the Greek island of Santorini. Until now, radiocarbon results typically gave a best date in the low 1600s BC, about 100 years older than given by most archaeological assessments. IntCal20 improves the accuracy of dating but makes the debate more complicated: overall, it bumps t he calendar dates for the radiocarbon result about 5–15 years younger, but — because the calibration curve wiggles around a lot — it also provides six potential time windows for the eruption, most likely in the low 1600s BC, but maybe in the high 1500s BC." Radiocarbon Dating Updated |
|
