General questions about metal, steel, iron.. What is it, where does it come from, how is it made by ancients?

Question

Like, if someone had a metal/steel/iron axe that could cut trees, how did they create it? From first process, to final process?

Answer 1

The progression from stone to copper to bronze (first made with arsenic, later with tin) to iron and steel is slightly different in various parts of the world.

Egypt and Persia always seemed to be ahead of others in the Western areas and China and Japan leaders in the East.

Starting by using native metal nuggets and later from smelting ores, metals were used in tools and weapons. Pure copper is soft, bronzes harder and iron and steel the hardest. All metals need to be worked (forged) to get best results.

The process of hammering makes most metals harder and more brittle. Shaping is also done mostly by hammering. Cutting and drilling came very much later. Sharpening was originally done by using stones. Handles were first joined much like for stone heads but later used different techniques.

Answer 2

the earliest metal used by man as an impliment was copper. It can be extracted from ore in a normal campfire. It is not a hard metal, but is sharp and easy to work.

next came the discovery of tin, and the mixing of that with copper produced a harder, easier to work, and tougher metal called Bronze. This technology enabled many cultures to grow quite fast, bot through military conquest (a bronze sword will destroy a copper sword when they strike each other) as well as agriculturaly as the bronze tools allowed better plowing and harvesting utensils.

Iron was known, but very very rare, since only a lightning strike on iron ore could smelt it naturally. people of Africa and the middle east found a way to melt iron ore in to what is called "bloom iron" via a simple clay kiln that concentrates the heat from charcoal.

Steel was first discovered as a property of iron. if you packed an iron impliment in carbon, usually charcoal, and heated it for a long time at very high temperatures, such as those in a forge, it formed a very hard shell. this was called "blister steel".
As man found new ways to make hotter and hotter smelting kilns, he also found that placing other materials in to the iron changed it's properties. The addition of dilica (sand) and carbon to the mix produced an incredibly strong metal that we know as steel.

On a side note, the strongest steel known to man was from a region known as Damascus, and is a lost art. Many attempts at reproducing it today have failed, the cosest is a process called wootz steel that includes danelions and green colored glass from a Heineken bottle.

Answer 3

Well, It come from our rich natural resources. During the early days, survival is a basic human necessity. So, out of their imagination, they made weapons and other survival kit made of metal/steel or iron. It's not that perfect. but I can assure you, it is very useful.