Every weapon nerd : *debate swords furiously * Historians: “spears and missle weapons were much more important in wars than swords” Weapon nerds: *continue debating swords furiously*….
Ironically enough the first siege weapons were slingshots with ball ammunition made from clay(processed and hardened) against walls made from clay. Also first weapon not made for hunting but guarding the elite against the poor & exploited were long bladed half staffs. So like a sword with really long grip so basically a spear with a long blade ..
It'd be interesting to do a chemical comparison of the iron from those other kingdoms to Hittite iron to find out whether they developed independently, or if those who did smelt it, in fact also dealt it.
The production of bronze required a complex international trade network to produce, iron requires smelting which is technically complex but can be done by smaller powers rather than vast empires with developed commercial concerns. Bronze is the metal of established empires, iron is the metal of up-and-coming nations.
Exactly. Copper is basically ubiquitous, but tin deposits are very very few and far between. Once international trade networks collapsed, a bronze shortage followed. Iron, on the other hand, is abundantly present almost anywhere.
@@Angelimir And iron was far more abundant back then. You could even dredge for bog iron if you hated pickaxes. Of course, all of the easily accessible iron was used up and now we have to dig deep for more.
Wrought iron, which is waht you usually get from a cold air furnace, is no better than iron.But iron ore is much more common. You have to make steel out of the iron.This is a tricky business. Possibly took them centuries to figure out how to make steel and heat treat it.
I appreciate that the movie clip doesn't show the iron cutting straight through the bronze. It takes a big chip out of the edge, which allows the next, harder chop, to snap the spine
Yes - important point! Actual bronze swords have substantial edge nicks albeit not as deep as depicted - but then they were cutting each other, not getting cut by iron blades.
@@skepticalbadger I was in the army when i was younger. I visited the museums as often as i could in host countries. I saw a fair number of swords mostly greek and persian weapons. I noted the bronze examples were shorter and thicker. The iron swords were thinner and about the same length but i noticed as iron moved towards steel the iron swords got longer and thinner. The bronze remained short and thick. The length and durability seems like the point of advantage to me, not cutting through a bronze sword or armor.
@@mrbreck1those are factors, yes; it's my understanding, however, that a big part of the early Iron boom is that, once you can smelt it efficiently, it's cheap as chips. Bronze is Copper(expensive) and Tin(rare), at least one of which must be bought at great expense and shipped over vast distance. Iron ore is *everywhere*, and the main alloying agent is the Carbon in the charcoal you were already using to smelt it. You could outfit your whole army much more easily with Iron then bronze, once industry catches up.
Thats actually fairly realistic, if the bronze sword was of shabby quality. Bronze is an umbrella term for a lot of alloys and their properties may vary wildly.
You may read my PhD. Jens Nieling: The introduction of Iron technology in Southern Caucasia and Eastern Anatolia. 2009. There was early steel in Eastern Anatolia. 13th century BC But not in larger quantities so far. There are bracelet / bars of laminated steel and iron in two defined layers. The region became later Urartu. My thesis is, that the nomad people, to whom no Bronze age culture like Hittites or Egypt would sell bronze in large quantities, were among the first to devellop iron/steel technology on larger scale than "jewellery daggers for kings"
Interesting idea. I understand that the southern kingdoms of China during Warring States period used more iron than the northerners. Most of the northern kingdoms would have been organised and considered Chinese longer.
Would you say that one advantage iron had, was that it didn't rely on alloying two different metals that often required extensive trade routs to acquire, and that the impact on the stability of those trade routes resulting from the bronze age collapse, stimulated the shift to the more abundant iron that can often be sourced locally?
@@atypical1000 Never mind alloying, iron is one of the most abundant elements in the universe (Earth literally has gigantic ball of it inside) while copper and tin are really rare, and they can only be found in any sensible quantities due to lodes of pure material, unlike iron that rusts easily and can be only found in oxidized ores. Look how big Roman empire was, and they only had notable sources of metals needed for bronze on very fringes of the empire, like Cyprus or Atlantic shores of Spain and Britain...
My understanding is that iron superceded bronze because it was more abundant and cheaper than copper / tin /bronze and so could equip more soldiers more cost effectively and so made larger armies possible. Also iron supply lines could not be blocked by your enemy as easily, so iron was was more dependably available. Those were the main advantages - not the properties of the materials themselves.
As you say logistics played a big part. I imagine diplomacy also had a role as, if you rely on another kingdom for a critical materials, you have to be more polite when dealing with them. When you are independent of that trade you can afford to be more belligerent and that could lead to more incidents that accumulate and lead to war.
Iron also was often a significantly inferior material to bronze - depending on the iron deposit and the processes applied to it, and only became equal, and later superior, after significant experience working with the material was gained over generations.
Theres a letter from Muwatillis to the Assirian King that says that "the good iron" (forged?) was not ready, but nevertheless he sends a "bad iron" (meteoric?) dagger as a gift.
I am curious to know how/why they called it "bad iron". Did they make a meteoritic dagger and then test it and then realise the quality? They then resmelt and make the weapon to give to others as a gift as they know it is not fight usable.
My guess is the bad iron was stuff that had been quickly consolidated from the bloom, while good iron would had been repeatedly beatened and folded many times to remove the excess slag and homogenize its composition.
@@Jimmy-p9n They didn't call anything "bad iron". Just this reference to "good iron". Also, the king who sent it isn't named, so there's some wiggle room there. I would say it was sent by Muwatalli's (second) successor and brother, Hattusili III.
And in reality, the metal being cast is almost always aluminum. It's lightweight, cheap and omnipresent as random scrap (now), and melts nicely below glowing temperature. The liquid metal can then be heated to a nice "red hot" glow that doesn't blow out cameras' dynamic range and is a lot less dangerous and obnoxious to be around than steel, which can be white-hot and still solid and require reflective clothing just to be in the same room.
@@HypoceeYT In my DnD game, Mithril is just magical Aluminum. It requires an incredibly hot forging technique known only to the Dwarves and then magically infused for hardness and durability. That's why it is so much lighter and so shiny than other metals. It also explains why it is so rare and so valuable in pre-industrial societies, Aluminum was more valuable than gold until about 250 years ago.
Early civilizations would've been less likely to say "the Iron Sword will break all Bronze Swords!" and more like "Thank gods we don't have to scavenge or trade for tin so much anymore! We can economically produce Iron Swords and we'll find a way to improve iron smithing over time!".
@@treeaboo "In my grandfather's time the mark up of the Tartessians was bigger but the Carthaginians give you light weight. Never trust a carthaginian. Honest Hanno my hairy butt."
@@xhagastindeed, Qin during warring states China used mostly bronze weapons (even after most most their defeated enemies switched to Iron) yet used mostly iron/steel plow, hoes and other farming instruments owned and maintained by the state.
considering Sinhue was a doctor and Horumheb was a general who became pharoah by his own hand, that was a pretty stupid move. ...kicks him in the nuts and chops off his head. "Look at this, he didn't even have a proper sword..."
A source of terrestrial native iron you didn't mention--and one available to Northern European peoples--is bog iron. Nodules of raw iron formed in the reducing environments of acid, anoxic bogs.
You can pan just about any stream or river in the world and find black sand. It's probably not the most efficient means but a good demonstration on how ubiquitous it is.
That good old iron bacteria. Watching the dude over on primitive technology slowly gathering iron prills from harvesting, processing and smelting rust colored water is fascinating - if remarkably labour intensive.
Thanks for finally clarifying that scene for me! I saw the movie as a kid and that scene is the most memorable part of it (other than the awfully non-Egyptian costume design). The movie oversimplifies the plot of the book, in the novel, iron was only part of the Hittites' strategy and their real secret weapon was to build secret water caches in the desert to supply their troops as they crossed. Mika Waltari wrote 'Sinuhe The Egyptian' as a parable of World War Two, so he translated many modern political and military elements to an ancient setting. That's where the concept that one side having a secret weapon came from. In reality, iron was not a secret to the Egyptians, they just were late in adopting it, but archaeologists have found iron jewelry dating to much earlier periods than the one this movie takes place
Good point and well stated about iron being known in the bronze age, and bronze being used in the iron age! I'm a Danish archaeologist, and most people don't realise how much flint was used in the bronze age, but all their common tools was still flint. Bronze was a commodity, especially in Denmark, where it was imported.
This has been fascinating to me, since i heard of it, is it because of tradition? Did a certain % of people go, "well, my grandpa killt him a whole bunch of them no good theiving bastards across the crick, and he only ever used flint/bronze weopons, so they are good enough for me!" Was it economic? Some farmer far from the border of their country, doesnt need to have as high tech of weoponry, as a soldier or a farmer on a contested border with an enemy? Or one of the many other posibilities meantioned. Intrresting stuff. Im a mechanic/machinist in a rural area, in a country pretty set up to screw over small farmers, it is fascination to see the blend of old and new technologies they have come up with just to survive, from manufacturing parts to keep antique tractors running, when replacements arent available, to learning how to be a hacker, to repair their modern john deere tractor...
@bondvagabond42 People continued using flint, because it was readily available, and had skilled craftsmen to work with it and teach future generations. Bronze was expensive and, at least for a long time, limited to an elite to show wealth and power.
Auto body technicians use brass mallets (not bronze, I know, but still a copper alloy) for when they need to whack a spot without smashing the material being whacked.
as another dumb aside, I work with stainless steel and when removing the plastic coating, we use homemade copper blades to cut through the plastic, as copper is too soft to score the steel. Freaks the customers out when they see you running a sharp bit of metal across their brand new stainless :)
What made iron popular was that it is found almost everywhere where as tin was found in few areas, British Is and Afganistan, both hard to get to. Early iron also needed to be thick to be strong enough. How a rapier or small sword would do made of either, would be interesting.
Imagine asking someone to strike at your face with a metal sword that you expected to disintegrate when you parried it. And not even a pair of safety glasses in sight.
Ancient Egypt was well known as a land of work safety hazards, with many Pharaohs issuing ever more severe punishments for anyone found with safety glasses.
A couple years back I set myself on the path of recreating the mirrors Newton used in his reflector telescope. He used an alloy of bronze known as Speculum. On the surface, it should be pretty easy, Speculum bronze is just 2:1 copper:tin. My first series of castings were horrible: it would shatter if you looked at it funny. So I reached out to a historian I know to ask what sort of contaminants were in british copper and tin. He helped me find a metallurgical analysis of contemporary coinage that gave me my answer: The copper had traces of lead, cadmium, and arsenic in it. (Just what you want in coins!) While I do have some of each if NEEDED, I subbed out for straight Bismuth, as Bismuth expands when it freezes, and would help reduce stresses as the alloy cooled. Worked a charm, and some of my first castings were sent to the team behind NASA's Psyche mission. (AKA Journey to a Metal World. . . Psyche is a fascinating asteroid!)
I remember the " Conan the Adventurer" cartoon series back in the '90s where "Star Metal" weapons were the only things that could defeat Stygians and not only show their true lizard-like form, but send them back to the dimension they came from.
@@osirisatot19 dude, that sounds like a cartoon I would definitely watch! The adventures of tutankhamun fighting lizard people? With a magic sword? Yes sign me up!
The Egyptians were still using a lot of unalloyed (or nearly unalloyed) copper to equip "rank-and-file" soldiers at the time the Hittite Empire came into power. Egypt had plenty of copper mines, but they had to import tin. It would be mostly Egyptian nobility and elite troops that would be equipped with bronze (at least, in Egypt).
One more thought... I've read an analysis of Celtic folktale that calls the fae weakness to iron a parable for the defeat of bronze-age people by iron-age invaders (the people telling the story).
@@58jharris Yep, unabashedly so! Another theory is that the legends reflect iron giving mankind more control over nature than they'd previously had. This is what we natter about in Celtic Lit class while waiting for Prof to show up... ;D
I would love to see advantages of bronze over steel with the utilization of something like complex casting that can't be done with steel forging. There might be some weapons that would benefit from having physically strengthened structure from complex geometry or something.
Except cast bronze is less strong and most bronze blades at the time would been at least partly forged or cold worked into shape, which hardens and strengthens the bronze.
Two points: 1) economics, if I can equip 7000 men with iron headed spears for the same cost as 5000 with bronze spears I'm taking the iron. 2) as far as I know the oldest steel blade is of Canaanite origin from around 2100 BC , an area the Hittites were deeply involved in. so the movie clip may be more accurate than you think.
@@yoeyyoey8937 Probably even more if you happen to get iron ore domestically - which is quite likely - but have to import the copper and/or tin, in which case all the gold and silver in the World won't equip you a single troop with bronze if the trade routes are cut off.
Super choping probably worked well against drafted peasants who were already scared shitless to face fully armed and geared samurai and when this hulking demon lunges at you yelling like a madman the shit would come no doubt.
Iron swords deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that. I should know what I'm talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine iron sword in Hatti for 2,400,000 Talants and have been practicing with it for almost 2 years now. I can even cut slabs of solid bronze with my iron sword. Hittite smiths spend years working on a single iron sword and fold it up to a million times to produce the finest blades known to mankind. Iron swords are thrice as sharp as bronze swords and thrice as hard for that matter too. Anything a kopesh can cut through, a iron sword can cut through better. I'm pretty sure a iron sword could easily bisect a warrior wearing Dendra panoply with a simple vertical slash. Ever wonder why bronze-age Europe never bothered conquering Hatti? That's right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined Hittites and their iron swords of destruction. Even in the Alexandrian wars, Macedonian phalanxes targeted the men with the iron swords first because their killing power was feared and respected. So what am I saying? iron swords are simply the best sword that the world has ever seen. This is a fact and you can't deny it.
Thanks for noting the gradual transition. Even the Bronze Age Collapse took a while. It's not like some girl's diary had an entry, "Dad's so Bronze Age! Doesn't he know it's Barbarian Times now?"
And actually there is a book (Hesiods theogony 700 BC Greece) which basically says. We poor creatures of the iron Age! It was much better in the old Heroic days, when everything was made of bronze. This is perhaps as close as we can get.
Arsenic was added to bronze formulations to improve hardness according to one source I read. From what I read in another source, the connection of iron with the Hitties was due to the relative ease of access to iron deposits in their territories. One of the problems with discussing the Hitties is that their empire went through several phases of strength and collapse.
As I understand it, this was this was in the early bronze stage where they found copper deposits with high arsenic levels which had a hardening effect. Once they worked out the 10% tin ratio to make real bronze, the arsenic copper was largely forgotten about.
@@emperoralexis8419 arsenical copper definitely predates bronze and was replaced by bronzes. But was arsenic a beneficial hardening agent as a contaminant? Likely.
My understanding (note that qualifier) is that bronze weapons fell out of favor after the Bronze Age Collapse because the trade routes that provided a ready source of tin were no longer available. Arsenic was available for making bronze alloys, but also more dangerous to work with and didn't make the same quality of bronze. Iron was more available. Carbon can be made by burning wood. They worked with what they had, and eventually learned how to make better weapons than bronze. It was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. (I think that's from Thomas Edison.)
Two more details. 1 is that I can easily see iron weapons cutting through cheap, low tin content swords. 2 is that Horemheb (Victor Mature in The Egyptian) WON HIS WAR WITH THE HITTITES!!!! So what if Hittite officer iron swords cut through Egyptian swords? In the end Egyptian spears and arrows eventually defeated the Hittite army.
@@xhagast I don't know what war with the Hittites you're talking about. But it's irrelevant to your point. Horemheb ruled in the middle of Hittite history. The Hittites and Egyptians went to war plenty of times after him. Heck, the Battle of Kadesh took place after him. Also, the Hittites didn't use iron weapons. They used bronze, just like the Egyptians.
@@xhagast Quality of manufacture is a telling issue no matter what weapon is being used. Even as late into the modern era as WW2, the US Mk XIII, XIV and XV torpedoes did not work at the start of the war due to shoddy manufacturing and inadequate testing. The same is true of all eras, including lesser quality iron and bronze swords in the late Bronze Age.
Most of the wood wasn’t use pd to deliver carbon to the iron to make steel. It also wasn’t used to create high temperatures for melting the iron. It was used (in the form of charcoal) to create carbon monoxide that would pull out oxygen atoms from the rusty iron compounds in the ore. That’s why smelting iron was such a slow process.
It's confusing to laymen that "Iron Age" and "Bronze Age" are just labels for archaeologists, with incidental connection to the actual metallurgy being practiced. The Late Bronze Age collapse *defines* the boundary between the two, but "Iron Age I" doesn't, in many places, use more iron than "Late Bronze Age", and because of the collapse is often less technologically sophisticated.
The way some historians have characterised the military use of the two metals is economics, describing weapon quality bronze as a semiprecious metal and expensive military prospect to equip a large troop force, making warfare an aristocratic affair and once you've figured out how to extract usable iron from ore it's a lot cheaper to equip equivalent weapons in good numbers with wider financial availability, inferring the facilitation of barbarian raiders to challenge the military supremacy of wealthy palaces. I don't know how true that is but seemed a reasonable explanation.
Economics rule the world. Only tiny armies can live off the land. And that temporarily. Tin was rare, expensive and under the control of foreigners. Iron is a pain to work but you can find some iron almost anyywhere.
The simple fact that if you can produce iron weapons you no longer have to rely on expensive trade networks with far off lands certainly would help a lot of less centralised groups arm themselves effectively.
@@treeaboo Yup, make sense that with time, and fuel you can turn iron into anything. But without tin/copper you have no bronze, and what you do have you can't trade your shovels for swords as a nation and survive for long.
Hey there Matt. Todd would actually be a great person to talk to about this. As a blacksmith, i can say with some very little authority, that in the production of iron (the basic smelting process) you can accidently make medium to high carbon steel, as evidenced by the japanese making Tamahagane. Further to this when forging iron, depending on the thickness, and fuel used and how the iron is forged, there is a chance of what is called "carbon migration". Where carbon can be absobed or lost in the forging process though its usually lost. Additionally, steel seems to corrode faster than plain iron, generally speaking. So there is the possibility that the traces of steel found in hittite weapons are the remenants of a more substantial carbon edge. Especially since as you stated, the hitties were some of the early adopters of iron, either for the recognition of its durability, or for economic and social/spiritual reasons, (iron was the "metal of the gods after all) there is a slight to reasonable chance that over time, some of them at least understood that certain forms of iron were likely to be of better quality for making weapons than others, and as with any trade. Those that made better products were often better compensated. From my own research into the topic, there is a MASSIVE overlap between low quality Iron weapons, and low quality bronze weapons. And well made bronze weapon coukd easily stand up to a low quality iron one. However. As iron moves up to steel, even in its early forms ( im talking king vs king type quality) good "iron" (read steel, as most meuseums lable steel as either iron or iron alloy from those era's) does generally out preform bronze. All things being equal. This is is addition to iron, bespite being harder to initially make, being more abundant than tin, and therefore being easier to access when tin supposedly became less accessible (one of the theorised resaons for the bronze age collapse)
A bit of pedantry (that maybe you covered) - I think you said cast iron lacked carbon and that photo-steel would be iron with a little carbon, but I think it's the other way around. Yes steel is an allow of elemental iron and carbon, but the metal we call "cast iron" actually has much more carbon in it than steel. So (I think) the invention of steel was more about reducing the carbon than adding it. The confusion comes because the allow "cast iron" has the same name as the element "iron". Eager to be corrected if I am mistaken
Properly speaking the distinction lies with the Crystal Structure, which rapidly gets a lot more complicated than just the raw carbon percentage. For instance there a number of factors in the processing which will cause you to have Martensite versus Pearlite, and that's not going that deep into it. Part of the issue with going from a Cast Iron to a Steel along those lines is working out the silicon and other impurities to allow for a relatively pure iron crystal structure that Carbon can then slot into, rather than having... graphite. The perhaps oversimplified basic idea with Steel is Iron Crystals with Interstitial Atoms... helping to lock up the Crystal structure.
Cast iron is a specific kind of iron that we add particular things to that make it cast better and at a lower temperature than other kinds of steel. And he never mentioned cast iron, he said that bronze is cast and iron is smelted; he talked about wrought iron; which is actually iron; unlike pig iron and cast iron.
Your data is correct, your conclusion is false and here is why. At the time of the introduction of iron there were not kiln's hot enough to liquify iron in order to create cast iron. That tech came over 2000 years later...
In one of mats older videos from a few weeks ago on bronze swords I made a comment about meteorite swords cutting through bronze swords and some people commented about how that was impossible and not likely but i still felt it was a good topic to talk about. Seems i was right :) Great video as always!
I am firmly convinced the RARE steel blade is where the MAGIC SWORD myths come from, when everyone else had borne weapons. The stories keep getting "pulled" forward and everyone forgets WHEN/WHERE the original story came from.
There is a recipe for magic swords in the Saga of Wayland the Smith. Grind it to powder, feed it to chickens, and recover the iron from the droppings to reforge it. The iron produced is a medium steel, far better than the wrought iron that was made at the time.
@@Egilhelmson The acids from the poop probably burn off some of the unwanted minerals or make them able to be dissolved in water leaving purer iron, which in turn lets the carbon bond more evenly. Silly how they probably made the connection between (probably expensive) acids burning the ore, and (free!) chicken poop being acidic and put them together =p
meteoric 'iron' is actually a high grade nickel steel. Annealed by slow cooling int he core of a small planet, the iron grain structure is far larger than human produced iron.
Bronze being able to be cast into complex shapes is similar to why brass sword guards were popular; they could be made into more decorative and unique shapes. They also had the added benefit of easier to clean than steel hand guards. Though they do have the downside of being less likely to survive a big two-handed axe strike.
Speaking of the HUGE overlap between the bronze & iron ages, WE STILL USE BRONZE RIGHT NOW, TODAY! It’s used in many musical instruments, declarations of every description, sleeve bearings, some kinds of electrical connectors, and plenty of marine fittings. In fact I would expect that the tonnage of bronze produced today is orders of magnitude higher than it was during the height of the Bronze Age, simply because of how many human beings exist today, and the shear volume of stuff we make. So the idea that there isn’t any kind of sudden shift where one day people went from from using bronze to using iron is an important point. Also simply knowing that your enemy has now has iron swords in deployable numbers doesn’t do you much good. To catch up you need huge numbers of smiths, the hardware those smiths need to work that iron, the supply chains to get from the iron ore mines to delivering raw iron in a form the smiths can use (like ingots or bags of various size pieces of iron, or whatever). And all of that takes WEALTH, AND TIME, to develop that kind of underlying infrastructure. Until then you fight with what you’ve got, until you can fight with what you need to win.
Enjoyed the video. My understanding of the difference between blades of the bronze and iron comes from playing around with some blades we made for metal work classes in high school. Bronze has lower elastic property than iron. Therefore, if not harden has a thicker cutting edge to prevent bending, having 2 effects 1. if the dimensions (length and width) are the same the blade is heavier, and you fatigue faster swinging it around. 2. thicker blade encounters more resistance and does cut as deeply. The quality iron blades improve after repeated heat cycling and hammering to repair them. In contrast the hardened bronze blades seemed more brittle, and one snapped without warning (we had to stop hitting things after that)
Syrian iron ore (mined in northern Syria - part of native Hittite lands) has always been considered excellent for blade construction due to it's composition. It's the naturally occurring hypoeutectoid properties of the ore which makes it special, and from which many of the famous Viking 'Ulfberht' blades were made. And also, the consignment of 300 basket hilt 'Damascus' back swords commissioned by King Philip of Spain (crafted in Spain by Moorish swordsmiths imported exclusively for the task) as gifts for Bonnie prince Charlie, his senior Clan chiefs and close retainers, prior to the ill-fated battle of Culloden. Incidentally, It's these 300 Moorish blades which inspired the storyline for the 'Highlander' movies. I was fortunate enough to have inadvertently stumbled across one in an antique shop just outside King's Lynn back during the mid 1970's, long, long ago, when I was in my early teens. Cost me 25 pounds, a veritable king's ransom for me back then. Had to borrow several months pocket money in advance from my mum, and do extra time helping with work in the garden. 😜 The entire sword is still in totally original condition and to this day retains a razor sharp edge, it's clearly never been resharpened. Pure testament to the natural quality of 'Hittite' steel.
I seem to remember a section of Tacitus’ writings where he describes Roman soldiers stepping back out of the front line to straighten their iron/munitions grade steel swords. I think that’s such an evocative image.
As you mentioned, making very long blades is easier with steel than bronze. The Jian family shows that evolution over time; with there being a model of Warring States Period Chu Jian that predates other long swords.
Oh my god thank you so much! I had a memory of seeing that movie some time in the 70s when I was maybe 10 years old that's stuck with me all this time and have been trying to figure out for decades what it was. For some reason the line "It cuts through our Egyptian copper like a knife through straw" (from a few minutes after the scene you showed) must have really made an impression on me, because it's literally the only thing I remembered. As an adult and with no context I figured they were talking about Damascus steel vs iron or something, so that probably hindered the searches I've done for this movie over the years. But no longer! Finally I can put this (extremely trivial) question to rest! 🤓 Thanks again!
Iron was adopted not because it was better, in fact at the time with the technology available, iron was worse than bronze. Rather it was adopted because the collapse of the Bronze Age super powers lead to a collapse in the trade networks that made bronze smelting on large scale possible.
This is incorrect. Iron was better even then, the issue was the time required to work it. Bronze was very expensive but could be converted to weapons very quickly (dozens per day per cast). Iron was very cheap, but it took a long time to create anything with it (a very skilled smith/smelter would take days per sword from Ore to Sword, or if the iron was already separated it would likely still be 1ish sword per day). When the bronze age collapsed, the weapons pipe lines changed, but that doesnt mean the iron weapons were worse.
The Iron Age's start is conventionally placed at 1200 BC. The oldest iron-smelting site in the world dates at least to 2000 BC in Africa in Nsukka Eastern Nigeria.
Yes, there is a pretty convincing case for that. But iron did not take off immediately, everywhere. I'd love to find out how prevalent it became in Africa back then. It requires certain other favorable circumstances to really kick off an iron age It's a bit like wheeled toys being found in South America in a culture that never took the wheel to full size and common usage--or the Romans inventing a steam engine, but using it only as a cool toy. African Archeology is in its infancy and is sure to produce exciting discoveries in the near future!
It has been other places too around that time, the issue is that it appears in places then disappears. People get conquered and knowledge is lost because people die or are displaced. The person with the good ideas does not always have the better armies.
@@MTNwanderings People tend to forget that the long arc of human progress is not a linear thing, that there are stumbles and falls and sometimes knowledge is lost for years, decades, and centuries.
When I saw the title of your vid, I knew you would show that scene from the Egyptian. hahah Bravo. I do like your full content on the whole process, quite interesting.
Since iron and steel are so labor intensive where bronze could be melted, cast, and immediately outfit soldiers it's easy to understand how everyone kept using bronze. Also very likely: bronze withstands the ages far longer than iron and steel that rust away quite rapidly and thus evidence becomes fleeting.
On the last point, there is a Bronze Age sword in Ireland (ROM no.909.68.1) cast @ 1000-700 BC, that was last carried into battle by one of the rebels in the 1798 AD rebellion. He seems to have used it more as a farm tool than a primary weapon, but did bring it as a backup before dying at New Ross.
Even completely corroded away iron still leaves an archaeological trace. In ancient boats, we know mostly what they looked like and how they were built from the stains of iron nails that had held together long rotted away wood.
Have you ever work-hardened bronze? Neither have I but from the videos I've seen, it's a pretty lengthy and labor intensive process. So it's not quite like the swords came straight out of the molds and into the hands of soldiers!
Hi Matt, so far as I have read, being specific to the Battle of Kadesh，the technological advantage the Hittite had was the heavier and sturdier chariot that could support 3 soldiers instead of 2 like the Egyptian’s. And it is hypothesised that it is the application of iron on axles and shafts that allows the Hittites to design a heavier “shock” chariot, despite the lack of direct archeological evidence but just contextual ones. Just my 2 cents
I worked in the metal pouring department (pouring and running the crane up close and personal!) at a fine art bronze foundry and you're right, bronze sculptures are very soft. We used a bronze called "Everdur" which is easily worked and bent to align the panels and piece the statue together. it wouldn't be a good bronze for a sword at all!
What rubbish! Go ahead get the best steel sword you can get hold of. And chop through all of the above in one swing. And I.ll eat your sword. Words are cheep.
The swords in that 1954 movie look better than what we see for the period in some of today's movies. Swords are kinda sorta like pistols. Get way more attention than their actual use in today's battles would justify. Useful for pilots, aircrews, security, and law enforcement. Some tier one folks. Not so much for grunts. Their best use is for fighting your way to a shotgun or rifle.
Great video debunking iron/mild steel vs bronze. It seems that bronze was good enough to have been used alongside iron/steels for centuries across Eurasia, and was gradually displaced by the gradually increasing consistency, mass production, and cheaper production of higher quality irons/steels. In ancient China, Iron (or some type of steel) swords were made as early as the late Zhou Dynasty to Spring and Autumn era in the 700s BC or earlier...but some types of bronze weapons were used into the 200s BC. I have read discussions on historum forums (on topics such as Middle Eastern and Chinese bronze, iron, etc) where people say people commonly "accidentially" made steel since natural carbonization of iron was common.
The Philistine giant Goliath wore bronze armor, a bronze helmet and had an iron tipped spear and iron sword. Nevertheless, the adolescent shepherd David killed Goliath with a stone projectile flung from his sling. David then decapitated Goliath with the giant's own sword. The Philistine warriors fled in fear after witnessing their champion thus slain. Therefore in this famous skirmish, a simple stone weapon overcame a giant clad in bronze armor and wielding iron weapons.
I saw a Lex Friedman podcast with a historian that studied Alexander's armor, which was made of hardened cloth. He claimed that the later adoption of iron allowed the advent of sharper arrowheads that would be able to penetrate this type of armor, thus making it lose favor over the following years. So, could "sharpness" be a factor giving a good advantage?
The evidence of the hittites, developing an abundance of iron weapons and implements can be seen in only 1 place. That 1 place excludes the type of iron forging that you would normally see in the middle and dark ages or the bulk of the iron ages as it would be called. That evidence is the lack of a resource that should be found in the area that the Hittite Empire covered. That resource is iron, nodules, or round balls of condensed iron that can be heated and relatively easily hammered into shape to the point of creating a very good, high-grade iron implement/weapon. In some cases, even low-grade steel. The area that Empire existed in should have been covered in those nodules. However, it wasn't. This points to someone gathering those nodules. And figuring out how to turn them into implements very quickly and efficiently. This would free up an abundance of bronze to be used in projectile weapons, armor, and spearheads. It would also give the Hittite soldiers who were fighting on the ground. A decided advantage in close quarters combat. Though I actually doubt they used the iron in swords. As shown in the movie. Chances are the iron would be used to create something more resembling an elongated or stretched ax head. Essentially, creating a cross between an ax and a sword. It is essentially the freeing up of resources that the use of iron under those circumstances would allow them to have an advantage. For an example of those iron nodules found in locations where they were not gathered up in mass and used for iron weapons. Here is an example of somebody who came across some while exploring canyons. ruclips.net/video/FmhV0Isktj0/видео.htmlsi=38b-fsK1CEhzMbLL To win wars, children study battles. Adults study logistics. Those iron nodules at 5:15 in that condition can be gathered up like a crop heated in the same way bronze is heated under the same conditions. Using the same forging techniques. The only difference is instead of pouring it into a mold, you just hammer it into shape when it's hot enough. The iron doesn't have to be at the melting temperature either.
From my perspective as a former model and pattern maker is that I suspect most of the moulds for bronze casting would have been SAND castings, not from stone moulds. Why? Because stone moulds take a LOT of work to make. And don't have the ability to create some of the complex shapes of bronze castings that are present in the archaeological record. There is also no pattern used to make stone casting moulds, as the stone is simply pecked or chiseled away to make the cavity. Patterns are fantastic, as they allow one to fabricate an object out of wood, or indeed wax (cire perdue) and create stunningly complex forms for the molten metal to flow into. There is no direct archaeological evidence of sand castings left preserved for us to look at specifically because A) they were made of just sand in a core box, and so would be easily lost over time. B) sand castings are almost always destroyed after the molten metal has been poured into it, and allowed to cool. The sand of the mould is invariably just hammered/knocked away to allow access to the product inside the mould.
Excellent points. I'd wonder if arrowheads and even spearheads might be worth carving into stone, though. An army of tens of thousands, or hundreds or thousands, might go through millions or arrows. Being a fairly simple shape would probably make it quick work for a stone-carver, which was a more common job back when everyone was building giganting monuments everywhere.
Yes indeed, for simpler items, I totally agree stone moulds would be much more appropriate, given the numbers and simplicity of design, as you say. But definitely for swords, daggers, more complex axes and spearheads and a whole host of other goods, I personally feel, sandcasting was used much more frequently than stone. There are even videos on YT, in places like India and Pakistan where the ancient traditions of sand and lost wax castings are still practiced and handed down through the family business. Fascinating process.
As a child I was crazy about the Hittites, I absolutely loved them, and I do remember mentions of them using iron, in books, websites and documentaries, but never as a main factor in their territorial expansion. A technology which I do remember presented as their major advantage is that of chariot design allowing for more weight to be carried on each chariot. That does make some sense in my mind even now
In the old Egyptian museum, everyone was amazed by Tut-Anch-Amun's famous gold mask, but hardly one paid attention to his iron dagger. It is among the oldest iron pieces in the world forged from a meteorite.
Bronze weapons were superior to early iron and even early steel weapons. People could work iron for centuries before the iron age, they rarely did so when bronze was available because bronze was superior. The issue is that while copper is common, tin is not. The bronze age required a vast trade structure, without this trade structure, there is no tin, without tin there is no bronze. Once the tin trade collapsed, the bronze age ended as well, because the economy was based on that trade, so more than just the production of bronze goods were affected. The iron age began because a replacement for bronze was now needed, not because iron was superior to bronze. Iron was superior to the alternative of copper only weapons and tools.
Matt is right. The poem Odissey, for example is set in the bronze age, but its people perfectly know iron: indeed, there is a verse where Odisseos throws and arrow between the rings of some iron axes. Wrought iron at their time were a low quality metal used for common tools, while tin bronze was a noble metal used for swords, spear heads and armors, with superior mechanical qualities, and more tarnish resistance. Meteorites apart, indeed, most part of copper came from chalcopirite (CuFeS2) smelting and the iron sponge was a by-product of this process: it was impossible that bronze age coppersmiths didn't know it. Alloyed with small amount of phosphorous, tin bronzes can reach mechanichal properties that can match mediavel crucible steels, and phosphorous was very easy to alloy with copper and tin, just by adding ashes or mineralized bone powder to the crucible (Chinese bronze age swords contain phopshorous). Just as an example a bronze alloy with 10% tin and 0.15% of phopsporous, which can be easly made in the bronze age, with the proper temper, can reach a tensile strength of 805 MPa, a yield strength of 755 MPa, an elongation at break of 18.5% and a hardness of about 250 Hv, which can be increased to more than 300, by hammering the edges. This is far better than medieval European blooming steels. Earlier wrought iron swords were far worst than the last bronze age swords. But iron is 940 times more abundant than copper and 25000 times mor abundant than tin, so a kingdom with iron swords can equipe a more numerous army and win battles, by outnumbering the opponents armed with higher quality bronze swords. That's way after the distruption of tin supply chain, which caused the end of bronze age, people reverted to produce iron weapons of lower quality but in higher quanitity. My complimet, Matt, you are a fantastic divulgator!!!
Both Homer, who is claimed being writer of both Odysee and War of Troy, and unknown writer of german Nibelungen tale gave an important message to warriors until our days: No kind of armour can allways protect your life! See Achill and Siegfried.
I like where you're coming from, but one quibble... I'd always assumed that the iron loops in the axes was an anachronism, as Homer lived in the post-Mycenean Iron Age himself.
@@hoi-polloi1863 That is a very debated topic: anachronism v. low quality metal used for common tools. Homer lived in the VIII century BC, so he certainly knew iron and could have made a mistake, by putting iron axes in a bronze age scenario, like a wristwatch in a movie set in the Roman Empire. But, thinking about the process of copper smelting from chalcopirite (CuFeS2), where iron sponge naturally appear as a by-product, IMHO it's very likely bronze age coppersmiths perfectly knew this low-quality metal so prone to rust. And it's also very likely that they had tried to work it: tin was rare and expensive and its long supply chain was a very limiting factor for bronze production, so I suspected that in the late bronze age, bronze was considered a high-cost high-quality alloy used for casting weapons and precious tools for nobles and wrought iron was a low-cost low-quality metal used for forging poor man common tools. Obviously it is only my opinion and it is not easy to prove it, given that bronze tools can last for hundreds of centuries, while iron manufacts deteriorate quickly.
My understanding is that the rise of iron weapons had less to do with it being superior to bronze, and more to do with it not requiring tin, which was a rare and hard to come by ore that could only be acquired through extensive trade networks... Iron in contrast, whike being hard to work with, is fairly abundant and can be found in most places.. no need to rely on trade network for your armorments.
Movies are not documentaries (I know there are documentary movies). It is an entertaining kind of art. If people like a movie, it is not BS. Just found your channel today. You got a Like.
Antenna swords after the collapse of the Bronze Age had less ornate pommels and had a new design more reminiscent of fish tail pommels due to Iron and Steel not being able to form the same complex shapes.
On a similar vain, people were still using napped flint tools and arrowheads thousands of years into the Bronze Age too. It doesn’t just matter how good the material is, it also matters how available, and labour intensive it is to work into something useful
This makes me think of muskets vs rifles. At the beginning of the civil war, Americans were very familiar with rifles but muskets were cheaper and faster to produce and train on, so the soldiers got muskets
More importantly I think, muskets were much quicker to load. I read about an incident where American rifleman ambushed British musketeer. The Americans had the range advantage and got the first shots off, but the surviving British were able to advance to musket range, shoot, fix bayonets, and then charge and route the Americans before they could shoot again. The two weapons fill different Tactical roles - the equivalent of modern assault rifles vs. sniper rifles.
At 12.20: Another of Angus McBryde's illustrations! His style is unmistakable! Give the man the credit he is due (a shame he is no longer with us). But his art lives on all over the Internet.
Every weapon nerd : *debate swords furiously *
Historians: “spears and missle weapons were much more important in wars than swords”
Weapon nerds: *continue debating swords furiously*….
Yeah, is there version of the Oakshot typology for spearheads, arrowheads and wood for such like there is for sword blades?
@@PJDAltamirus0425why do t you tell me about the invention of the “blood groove”
@@BlackCat-tc2tv Oh, that's a music genre for disco vampires.
Well. If it makes them happy... 😊
Ironically enough the first siege weapons were slingshots with ball ammunition made from clay(processed and hardened) against walls made from clay. Also first weapon not made for hunting but guarding the elite against the poor & exploited were long bladed half staffs. So like a sword with really long grip so basically a spear with a long blade ..
It'd be interesting to do a chemical comparison of the iron from those other kingdoms to Hittite iron to find out whether they developed independently, or if those who did smelt it, in fact also dealt it.
Well done sir.
🤣
A comment of rare artistry and refinement, well played sir, well played.
Oooooooooooooh!
LOL!! Brilliant!
The production of bronze required a complex international trade network to produce, iron requires smelting which is technically complex but can be done by smaller powers rather than vast empires with developed commercial concerns. Bronze is the metal of established empires, iron is the metal of up-and-coming nations.
Yay we don't have to deal with Tin Land any more.
Exactly. Copper is basically ubiquitous, but tin deposits are very very few and far between. Once international trade networks collapsed, a bronze shortage followed. Iron, on the other hand, is abundantly present almost anywhere.
@@Angelimir And iron was far more abundant back then. You could even dredge for bog iron if you hated pickaxes. Of course, all of the easily accessible iron was used up and now we have to dig deep for more.
Great leap foreward in 1950s disagrees!
Wrought iron, which is waht you usually get from a cold air furnace, is no better than iron.But iron ore is much more common. You have to make steel out of the iron.This is a tricky business. Possibly took them centuries to figure out how to make steel and heat treat it.
I appreciate that the movie clip doesn't show the iron cutting straight through the bronze. It takes a big chip out of the edge, which allows the next, harder chop, to snap the spine
Yes - important point! Actual bronze swords have substantial edge nicks albeit not as deep as depicted - but then they were cutting each other, not getting cut by iron blades.
@@skepticalbadger I was in the army when i was younger. I visited the museums as often as i could in host countries. I saw a fair number of swords mostly greek and persian weapons. I noted the bronze examples were shorter and thicker. The iron swords were thinner and about the same length but i noticed as iron moved towards steel the iron swords got longer and thinner. The bronze remained short and thick. The length and durability seems like the point of advantage to me, not cutting through a bronze sword or armor.
@@mrbreck1those are factors, yes; it's my understanding, however, that a big part of the early Iron boom is that, once you can smelt it efficiently, it's cheap as chips.
Bronze is Copper(expensive) and Tin(rare), at least one of which must be bought at great expense and shipped over vast distance.
Iron ore is *everywhere*, and the main alloying agent is the Carbon in the charcoal you were already using to smelt it.
You could outfit your whole army much more easily with Iron then bronze, once industry catches up.
@@squidlybytes I was not aware iron was that economically viable once production started. Another example of progress and another advantage,
Thats actually fairly realistic, if the bronze sword was of shabby quality. Bronze is an umbrella term for a lot of alloys and their properties may vary wildly.
Can't wait for the Tod Cutlery / Scholagladiatoria testing videos!
Testing vids have been done by swordy yters.
You may read my PhD. Jens Nieling: The introduction of Iron technology in Southern Caucasia and Eastern Anatolia. 2009. There was early steel in Eastern Anatolia. 13th century BC But not in larger quantities so far. There are bracelet / bars of laminated steel and iron in two defined layers. The region became later Urartu. My thesis is, that the nomad people, to whom no Bronze age culture like Hittites or Egypt would sell bronze in large quantities, were among the first to devellop iron/steel technology on larger scale than "jewellery daggers for kings"
Amazing! Is your thesis online anywhere?
Interesting idea. I understand that the southern kingdoms of China during Warring States period used more iron than the northerners. Most of the northern kingdoms would have been organised and considered Chinese longer.
Would you say that one advantage iron had, was that it didn't rely on alloying two different metals that often required extensive trade routs to acquire, and that the impact on the stability of those trade routes resulting from the bronze age collapse, stimulated the shift to the more abundant iron that can often be sourced locally?
@@atypical1000 Never mind alloying, iron is one of the most abundant elements in the universe (Earth literally has gigantic ball of it inside) while copper and tin are really rare, and they can only be found in any sensible quantities due to lodes of pure material, unlike iron that rusts easily and can be only found in oxidized ores. Look how big Roman empire was, and they only had notable sources of metals needed for bronze on very fringes of the empire, like Cyprus or Atlantic shores of Spain and Britain...
Yes I'd speculate iron/steel weapons developed in the Eurasian steppe
My understanding is that iron superceded bronze because it was more abundant and cheaper than copper / tin /bronze and so could equip more soldiers more cost effectively and so made larger armies possible. Also iron supply lines could not be blocked by your enemy as easily, so iron was was more dependably available. Those were the main advantages - not the properties of the materials themselves.
As you say logistics played a big part. I imagine diplomacy also had a role as, if you rely on another kingdom for a critical materials, you have to be more polite when dealing with them. When you are independent of that trade you can afford to be more belligerent and that could lead to more incidents that accumulate and lead to war.
@@silverjohn6037 _" ... afford to be more belligerent..."_
See the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Some real bastards, that bunch. 😊
Iron also was often a significantly inferior material to bronze - depending on the iron deposit and the processes applied to it, and only became equal, and later superior, after significant experience working with the material was gained over generations.
As in almost all things, when you want to get to the truth of the matter, follow the money.
@@robo5013 +1
Theres a letter from Muwatillis to the Assirian King that says that "the good iron" (forged?) was not ready, but nevertheless he sends a "bad iron" (meteoric?) dagger as a gift.
I am curious to know how/why they called it "bad iron".
Did they make a meteoritic dagger and then test it and then realise the quality?
They then resmelt and make the weapon to give to others as a gift as they know it is not fight usable.
My guess is the bad iron was stuff that had been quickly consolidated from the bloom, while good iron would had been repeatedly beatened and folded many times to remove the excess slag and homogenize its composition.
More likely it was wrought iron. Star iron is at the very least mystic.
@@Jimmy-p9n They didn't call anything "bad iron". Just this reference to "good iron". Also, the king who sent it isn't named, so there's some wiggle room there. I would say it was sent by Muwatalli's (second) successor and brother, Hattusili III.
Presumably the harder bits of the meteor take a longer time to cut and grind into a blade than the softer bits.
I just enjoy every movie that depicts a magical steel sword somehow being cast like bronze then immediately dunked in water lol
No kidding: Forging? What is forging?
@SchoolforHackers apperently hitting things a bunch with a hammer isn't as cool as pouring it out and chucking it in a bath lol
@@missourimongoose8858 Hephaestus might dispute that. ;)
And in reality, the metal being cast is almost always aluminum. It's lightweight, cheap and omnipresent as random scrap (now), and melts nicely below glowing temperature. The liquid metal can then be heated to a nice "red hot" glow that doesn't blow out cameras' dynamic range and is a lot less dangerous and obnoxious to be around than steel, which can be white-hot and still solid and require reflective clothing just to be in the same room.
@@HypoceeYT In my DnD game, Mithril is just magical Aluminum. It requires an incredibly hot forging technique known only to the Dwarves and then magically infused for hardness and durability. That's why it is so much lighter and so shiny than other metals.
It also explains why it is so rare and so valuable in pre-industrial societies, Aluminum was more valuable than gold until about 250 years ago.
Early civilizations would've been less likely to say "the Iron Sword will break all Bronze Swords!" and more like "Thank gods we don't have to scavenge or trade for tin so much anymore! We can economically produce Iron Swords and we'll find a way to improve iron smithing over time!".
And who cares for swords? We need plows, axes, hoes, hammers and pickaxes.
"Thank the gods we don't have to trade all those goats for tin from that merchant from the Tinland far beyond the sea"
@@treeaboo "In my grandfather's time the mark up of the Tartessians was bigger but the Carthaginians give you light weight. Never trust a carthaginian. Honest Hanno my hairy butt."
@@xhagastindeed, Qin during warring states China used mostly bronze weapons (even after most most their defeated enemies switched to Iron) yet used mostly iron/steel plow, hoes and other farming instruments owned and maintained by the state.
“Strike at me hard.”
Famous last words.
considering Sinhue was a doctor and Horumheb was a general who became pharoah by his own hand, that was a pretty stupid move.
...kicks him in the nuts and chops off his head. "Look at this, he didn't even have a proper sword..."
"See, when facing my superior iron sword, your bronze sword snaps in half like..." ***gets a half bronze sword into his face***
A source of terrestrial native iron you didn't mention--and one available to Northern European peoples--is bog iron. Nodules of raw iron formed in the reducing environments of acid, anoxic bogs.
You can pan just about any stream or river in the world and find black sand. It's probably not the most efficient means but a good demonstration on how ubiquitous it is.
That good old iron bacteria. Watching the dude over on primitive technology slowly gathering iron prills from harvesting, processing and smelting rust colored water is fascinating - if remarkably labour intensive.
Indeed, it was so common that local people called it "bog standard".
Thanks for finally clarifying that scene for me! I saw the movie as a kid and that scene is the most memorable part of it (other than the awfully non-Egyptian costume design). The movie oversimplifies the plot of the book, in the novel, iron was only part of the Hittites' strategy and their real secret weapon was to build secret water caches in the desert to supply their troops as they crossed. Mika Waltari wrote 'Sinuhe The Egyptian' as a parable of World War Two, so he translated many modern political and military elements to an ancient setting. That's where the concept that one side having a secret weapon came from. In reality, iron was not a secret to the Egyptians, they just were late in adopting it, but archaeologists have found iron jewelry dating to much earlier periods than the one this movie takes place
Good point and well stated about iron being known in the bronze age, and bronze being used in the iron age! I'm a Danish archaeologist, and most people don't realise how much flint was used in the bronze age, but all their common tools was still flint. Bronze was a commodity, especially in Denmark, where it was imported.
This has been fascinating to me, since i heard of it, is it because of tradition? Did a certain % of people go, "well, my grandpa killt him a whole bunch of them no good theiving bastards across the crick, and he only ever used flint/bronze weopons, so they are good enough for me!" Was it economic? Some farmer far from the border of their country, doesnt need to have as high tech of weoponry, as a soldier or a farmer on a contested border with an enemy? Or one of the many other posibilities meantioned. Intrresting stuff. Im a mechanic/machinist in a rural area, in a country pretty set up to screw over small farmers, it is fascination to see the blend of old and new technologies they have come up with just to survive, from manufacturing parts to keep antique tractors running, when replacements arent available, to learning how to be a hacker, to repair their modern john deere tractor...
@bondvagabond42 People continued using flint, because it was readily available, and had skilled craftsmen to work with it and teach future generations. Bronze was expensive and, at least for a long time, limited to an elite to show wealth and power.
i'm a painter and have bronze scrapers for when we're working around oil or gas tanks or drums because they don't spark
same goes for oil rig equipment
Auto body technicians use brass mallets (not bronze, I know, but still a copper alloy) for when they need to whack a spot without smashing the material being whacked.
Interesting stuff 😊
as another dumb aside, I work with stainless steel and when removing the plastic coating, we use homemade copper blades to cut through the plastic, as copper is too soft to score the steel. Freaks the customers out when they see you running a sharp bit of metal across their brand new stainless :)
What made iron popular was that it is found almost everywhere where as tin was found in few areas, British Is and Afganistan, both hard to get to. Early iron also needed to be thick to be strong enough. How a rapier or small sword would do made of either, would be interesting.
There are also deposits on the Iberian Peninsula.
Copper is also surprisingly rare
Britain has both, and gold, which was one of the reasons the Romans invaded
The Minoans manufactured long, narrow, thrusting swords out of bronze. Just search "minoan sword" and look at the images. They're impressive.
Imagine asking someone to strike at your face with a metal sword that you expected to disintegrate when you parried it. And not even a pair of safety glasses in sight.
He had his safety squints.
You mean like every one ever for the last 50 centuries before 1960 OSHA? Who wears safety glasses pffft 🎉😂
Ancient Egypt was well known as a land of work safety hazards, with many Pharaohs issuing ever more severe punishments for anyone found with safety glasses.
Send it🤠
Imagine if he stabbed instead of chopped. Surprised pikachu face. 😲
That intro was sword-and-sandal at its most Hollywood.
I think it was called the Egyptian
"They had iron swords. Iron. Swords."
I see what you did here))
I don`t get it..
And sometimes they made curved iron swords.
I was an adventurer once but I took a bronze arrow to the knee.
@@guntherhuemer1767 Skyrim reference
One of the best specialty historical channels! I've been watching you for years Mat and I get more from you than many others. Thanks
A couple years back I set myself on the path of recreating the mirrors Newton used in his reflector telescope. He used an alloy of bronze known as Speculum. On the surface, it should be pretty easy, Speculum bronze is just 2:1 copper:tin. My first series of castings were horrible: it would shatter if you looked at it funny. So I reached out to a historian I know to ask what sort of contaminants were in british copper and tin. He helped me find a metallurgical analysis of contemporary coinage that gave me my answer: The copper had traces of lead, cadmium, and arsenic in it. (Just what you want in coins!) While I do have some of each if NEEDED, I subbed out for straight Bismuth, as Bismuth expands when it freezes, and would help reduce stresses as the alloy cooled. Worked a charm, and some of my first castings were sent to the team behind NASA's Psyche mission. (AKA Journey to a Metal World. . . Psyche is a fascinating asteroid!)
nice!
Fusako8 what did they do with them?
so your final alloy was 2:1 bismuth : tin? Never heard of that.
@@Blaisem No it was 2:1 copper:tin but with trace amounts of bismuth added. Just enough to disrupt the crystal formation and relieve stress.
@@yoeyyoey8937 At the time, Speculum bronze was the easiest, cheapest mirror alloy to use. Silver backed glass was many decades away at that point.
The riddle, the riddle of steel.
"Flesh...flesh is stronger" ;)
Secret of steel
Krom is strong. Strong in his mountain
What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?
@@hoi-polloi1863Are you “Stealing” Thulsa Dooms lines? 🤣😂
I remember the " Conan the Adventurer" cartoon series back in the '90s where "Star Metal" weapons were the only things that could defeat Stygians and not only show their true lizard-like form, but send them back to the dimension they came from.
Yeah that's why king Tutankhamun had a meteor dagger, to fight lizard people.
Starmetal!
@@osirisatot19 dude, that sounds like a cartoon I would definitely watch! The adventures of tutankhamun fighting lizard people? With a magic sword? Yes sign me up!
I thought that was THE coolest cartoon as a kid.
The Egyptians were still using a lot of unalloyed (or nearly unalloyed) copper to equip "rank-and-file" soldiers at the time the Hittite Empire came into power. Egypt had plenty of copper mines, but they had to import tin. It would be mostly Egyptian nobility and elite troops that would be equipped with bronze (at least, in Egypt).
One more thought... I've read an analysis of Celtic folktale that calls the fae weakness to iron a parable for the defeat of bronze-age people by iron-age invaders (the people telling the story).
However, those beliefs are still in effect in some places today.
That sounds like speculation at best.
@@58jharris Yep, unabashedly so! Another theory is that the legends reflect iron giving mankind more control over nature than they'd previously had. This is what we natter about in Celtic Lit class while waiting for Prof to show up... ;D
I would love to see advantages of bronze over steel with the utilization of something like complex casting that can't be done with steel forging. There might be some weapons that would benefit from having physically strengthened structure from complex geometry or something.
Well, bronze helmets and maceheads were used in the roman era and early middle ages.
i mean, bronze is heavier then steel, so it has more cutting power against flesh
Except cast bronze is less strong and most bronze blades at the time would been at least partly forged or cold worked into shape, which hardens and strengthens the bronze.
@@stefthorman8548 Bronze is also denser than iron. Which means bronze weapons will be heavier on average for the same length and similar geometry.
Two points:
1) economics, if I can equip 7000 men with iron headed spears for the same cost as 5000 with bronze spears I'm taking the iron.
2) as far as I know the oldest steel blade is of Canaanite origin from around 2100 BC , an area the Hittites were deeply involved in. so the movie clip may be more accurate than you think.
You can equip 10-15k with the same as 5k or even more tbh
@@yoeyyoey8937 Probably even more if you happen to get iron ore domestically - which is quite likely - but have to import the copper and/or tin, in which case all the gold and silver in the World won't equip you a single troop with bronze if the trade routes are cut off.
@@pRahvi0 exactly. The bronze itself is basically just money that you’re handing out to your troops
The super chopping only came into fashion after Someone came back from japan and began yelling at the top of his lungs while telegraphing his attack.
Did you know they could chop right through bronze age machine gun barrels?
@@noisepuppet That's nothing. My phalanx once took out a half-dozen tanks with their spears.
@@nataliefaust7959 Sure, but... were you standing on a mountain? I'm not sure whether to give the Bronze Age the props here, or the Stone Age.
Super choping probably worked well against drafted peasants who were already scared shitless to face fully armed and geared samurai and when this hulking demon lunges at you yelling like a madman the shit would come no doubt.
Iron swords deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that.
I should know what I'm talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine iron sword in Hatti for 2,400,000 Talants and have been practicing with it for almost 2 years now. I can even cut slabs of solid bronze with my iron sword.
Hittite smiths spend years working on a single iron sword and fold it up to a million times to produce the finest blades known to mankind.
Iron swords are thrice as sharp as bronze swords and thrice as hard for that matter too. Anything a kopesh can cut through, a iron sword can cut through better. I'm pretty sure a iron sword could easily bisect a warrior wearing Dendra panoply with a simple vertical slash.
Ever wonder why bronze-age Europe never bothered conquering Hatti? That's right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined Hittites and their iron swords of destruction. Even in the Alexandrian wars, Macedonian phalanxes targeted the men with the iron swords first because their killing power was feared and respected.
So what am I saying? iron swords are simply the best sword that the world has ever seen. This is a fact and you can't deny it.
Thanks for noting the gradual transition. Even the Bronze Age Collapse took a while. It's not like some girl's diary had an entry, "Dad's so Bronze Age! Doesn't he know it's Barbarian Times now?"
It still happened surprisingly fast.
@@jamielondon6436 How so? I have a feeling in 20 or 30 years we might not be calling it the bronze age collapse.
And actually there is a book (Hesiods theogony 700 BC Greece) which basically says. We poor creatures of the iron Age! It was much better in the old Heroic days, when everything was made of bronze. This is perhaps as close as we can get.
"Goddam Sea Peoples immigrants..."
Thanks much. Love that scene from that 1954 movie (The Egyptian) with Victor Mature.
This is the kind of ultra-specific weapon history I love to see!
Arsenic was added to bronze formulations to improve hardness according to one source I read. From what I read in another source, the connection of iron with the Hitties was due to the relative ease of access to iron deposits in their territories. One of the problems with discussing the Hitties is that their empire went through several phases of strength and collapse.
As I understand it, this was this was in the early bronze stage where they found copper deposits with high arsenic levels which had a hardening effect. Once they worked out the 10% tin ratio to make real bronze, the arsenic copper was largely forgotten about.
@@emperoralexis8419 arsenical copper definitely predates bronze and was replaced by bronzes. But was arsenic a beneficial hardening agent as a contaminant? Likely.
My understanding (note that qualifier) is that bronze weapons fell out of favor after the Bronze Age Collapse because the trade routes that provided a ready source of tin were no longer available. Arsenic was available for making bronze alloys, but also more dangerous to work with and didn't make the same quality of bronze.
Iron was more available. Carbon can be made by burning wood. They worked with what they had, and eventually learned how to make better weapons than bronze. It was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. (I think that's from Thomas Edison.)
Two more details. 1 is that I can easily see iron weapons cutting through cheap, low tin content swords. 2 is that Horemheb (Victor Mature in The Egyptian) WON HIS WAR WITH THE HITTITES!!!! So what if Hittite officer iron swords cut through Egyptian swords? In the end Egyptian spears and arrows eventually defeated the Hittite army.
@@xhagast I don't know what war with the Hittites you're talking about. But it's irrelevant to your point. Horemheb ruled in the middle of Hittite history. The Hittites and Egyptians went to war plenty of times after him. Heck, the Battle of Kadesh took place after him. Also, the Hittites didn't use iron weapons. They used bronze, just like the Egyptians.
@@xhagast
Quality of manufacture is a telling issue no matter what weapon is being used. Even as late into the modern era as WW2, the US Mk XIII, XIV and XV torpedoes did not work at the start of the war due to shoddy manufacturing and inadequate testing. The same is true of all eras, including lesser quality iron and bronze swords in the late Bronze Age.
Most of the wood wasn’t use pd to deliver carbon to the iron to make steel. It also wasn’t used to create high temperatures for melting the iron. It was used (in the form of charcoal) to create carbon monoxide that would pull out oxygen atoms from the rusty iron compounds in the ore. That’s why smelting iron was such a slow process.
@@xhagastyeah but also bad iron is super brittle so the argument goes both ways
It's confusing to laymen that "Iron Age" and "Bronze Age" are just labels for archaeologists, with incidental connection to the actual metallurgy being practiced. The Late Bronze Age collapse *defines* the boundary between the two, but "Iron Age I" doesn't, in many places, use more iron than "Late Bronze Age", and because of the collapse is often less technologically sophisticated.
Any time I think of bronze vs iron I think of this scene! 😂
When I saw the video title I knew EXACTLY where this was coming from!
What movie is that scene from? *edit* ah, never mind, I rewatched the video and it is there at the bottom. The Egyptian from 1954.
I was looking for this comment. This scene has lived rent free in my head for most of my life lol
The way some historians have characterised the military use of the two metals is economics, describing weapon quality bronze as a semiprecious metal and expensive military prospect to equip a large troop force, making warfare an aristocratic affair and once you've figured out how to extract usable iron from ore it's a lot cheaper to equip equivalent weapons in good numbers with wider financial availability, inferring the facilitation of barbarian raiders to challenge the military supremacy of wealthy palaces. I don't know how true that is but seemed a reasonable explanation.
Economics rule the world. Only tiny armies can live off the land. And that temporarily. Tin was rare, expensive and under the control of foreigners. Iron is a pain to work but you can find some iron almost anyywhere.
Yah, that's how I learned it as well.
The simple fact that if you can produce iron weapons you no longer have to rely on expensive trade networks with far off lands certainly would help a lot of less centralised groups arm themselves effectively.
@@treeaboo Yup, make sense that with time, and fuel you can turn iron into anything. But without tin/copper you have no bronze, and what you do have you can't trade your shovels for swords as a nation and survive for long.
Smelting iron takes almost five times the fuel it takes to melt bronze.
Hey there Matt. Todd would actually be a great person to talk to about this. As a blacksmith, i can say with some very little authority, that in the production of iron (the basic smelting process) you can accidently make medium to high carbon steel, as evidenced by the japanese making Tamahagane. Further to this when forging iron, depending on the thickness, and fuel used and how the iron is forged, there is a chance of what is called "carbon migration". Where carbon can be absobed or lost in the forging process though its usually lost. Additionally, steel seems to corrode faster than plain iron, generally speaking. So there is the possibility that the traces of steel found in hittite weapons are the remenants of a more substantial carbon edge.
Especially since as you stated, the hitties were some of the early adopters of iron, either for the recognition of its durability, or for economic and social/spiritual reasons, (iron was the "metal of the gods after all) there is a slight to reasonable chance that over time, some of them at least understood that certain forms of iron were likely to be of better quality for making weapons than others, and as with any trade. Those that made better products were often better compensated. From my own research into the topic, there is a MASSIVE overlap between low quality Iron weapons, and low quality bronze weapons. And well made bronze weapon coukd easily stand up to a low quality iron one. However. As iron moves up to steel, even in its early forms ( im talking king vs king type quality) good "iron" (read steel, as most meuseums lable steel as either iron or iron alloy from those era's) does generally out preform bronze. All things being equal. This is is addition to iron, bespite being harder to initially make, being more abundant than tin, and therefore being easier to access when tin supposedly became less accessible (one of the theorised resaons for the bronze age collapse)
9:28. WOW!!! Three seconds makes a world of difference. Thank you!
We need a Tod-test!!!!
Thanks
Thanks 🗡️
A bit of pedantry (that maybe you covered) - I think you said cast iron lacked carbon and that photo-steel would be iron with a little carbon, but I think it's the other way around. Yes steel is an allow of elemental iron and carbon, but the metal we call "cast iron" actually has much more carbon in it than steel. So (I think) the invention of steel was more about reducing the carbon than adding it. The confusion comes because the allow "cast iron" has the same name as the element "iron". Eager to be corrected if I am mistaken
Properly speaking the distinction lies with the Crystal Structure, which rapidly gets a lot more complicated than just the raw carbon percentage. For instance there a number of factors in the processing which will cause you to have Martensite versus Pearlite, and that's not going that deep into it.
Part of the issue with going from a Cast Iron to a Steel along those lines is working out the silicon and other impurities to allow for a relatively pure iron crystal structure that Carbon can then slot into, rather than having... graphite. The perhaps oversimplified basic idea with Steel is Iron Crystals with Interstitial Atoms... helping to lock up the Crystal structure.
Cast iron is a specific kind of iron that we add particular things to that make it cast better and at a lower temperature than other kinds of steel. And he never mentioned cast iron, he said that bronze is cast and iron is smelted; he talked about wrought iron; which is actually iron; unlike pig iron and cast iron.
@@osirisatot19 Ah- that clears it up. So iron age iron is close to elemental iron
Your data is correct, your conclusion is false and here is why.
At the time of the introduction of iron there were not kiln's hot enough to liquify iron in order to create cast iron. That tech came over 2000 years later...
@@chrismcaulay7805 Thanks. This adds some more information to the answers others had given. I do appreciate learning this
In one of mats older videos from a few weeks ago on bronze swords I made a comment about meteorite swords cutting through bronze swords and some people commented about how that was impossible and not likely but i still felt it was a good topic to talk about. Seems i was right :)
Great video as always!
I am firmly convinced the RARE steel blade is where the MAGIC SWORD myths come from, when everyone else had borne weapons. The stories keep getting "pulled" forward and everyone forgets WHEN/WHERE the original story came from.
A good master smith with a mind for experimenting might produce AMAZING blades. Smiths were considered magic-users at a time.
@@xhagast Smiths were considered as practicing a sort of magic until surprisingly recently.
There is a recipe for magic swords in the Saga of Wayland the Smith. Grind it to powder, feed it to chickens, and recover the iron from the droppings to reforge it. The iron produced is a medium steel, far better than the wrought iron that was made at the time.
@@Egilhelmson The acids from the poop probably burn off some of the unwanted minerals or make them able to be dissolved in water leaving purer iron, which in turn lets the carbon bond more evenly. Silly how they probably made the connection between (probably expensive) acids burning the ore, and (free!) chicken poop being acidic and put them together =p
meteoric 'iron' is actually a high grade nickel steel. Annealed by slow cooling int he core of a small planet, the iron grain structure is far larger than human produced iron.
Love the background-characters with what seems to be iron chainmail without knowing what they wear xD.
Bronze being able to be cast into complex shapes is similar to why brass sword guards were popular; they could be made into more decorative and unique shapes. They also had the added benefit of easier to clean than steel hand guards. Though they do have the downside of being less likely to survive a big two-handed axe strike.
Speaking of the HUGE overlap between the bronze & iron ages, WE STILL USE BRONZE RIGHT NOW, TODAY!
It’s used in many musical instruments, declarations of every description, sleeve bearings, some kinds of electrical connectors, and plenty of marine fittings.
In fact I would expect that the tonnage of bronze produced today is orders of magnitude higher than it was during the height of the Bronze Age, simply because of how many human beings exist today, and the shear volume of stuff we make.
So the idea that there isn’t any kind of sudden shift where one day people went from from using bronze to using iron is an important point.
Also simply knowing that your enemy has now has iron swords in deployable numbers doesn’t do you much good.
To catch up you need huge numbers of smiths, the hardware those smiths need to work that iron, the supply chains to get from the iron ore mines to delivering raw iron in a form the smiths can use (like ingots or bags of various size pieces of iron, or whatever).
And all of that takes WEALTH, AND TIME, to develop that kind of underlying infrastructure.
Until then you fight with what you’ve got, until you can fight with what you need to win.
3:28 Pagan Matt Easton jumpscare
Enjoyed the video. My understanding of the difference between blades of the bronze and iron comes from playing around with some blades we made for metal work classes in high school.
Bronze has lower elastic property than iron. Therefore, if not harden has a thicker cutting edge to prevent bending, having 2 effects 1. if the dimensions (length and width) are the same the blade is heavier, and you fatigue faster swinging it around. 2. thicker blade encounters more resistance and does cut as deeply. The quality iron blades improve after repeated heat cycling and hammering to repair them. In contrast the hardened bronze blades seemed more brittle, and one snapped without warning (we had to stop hitting things after that)
Syrian iron ore (mined in northern Syria - part of native Hittite lands) has always been considered excellent for blade construction due to it's composition.
It's the naturally occurring hypoeutectoid properties of the ore which makes it special, and from which many of the famous Viking 'Ulfberht' blades were made. And also, the consignment of 300 basket hilt 'Damascus' back swords commissioned by King Philip of Spain (crafted in Spain by Moorish swordsmiths imported exclusively for the task) as gifts for Bonnie prince Charlie, his senior Clan chiefs and close retainers, prior to the ill-fated battle of Culloden.
Incidentally, It's these 300 Moorish blades which inspired the storyline for the 'Highlander' movies.
I was fortunate enough to have inadvertently stumbled across one in an antique shop just outside King's Lynn back during the mid 1970's, long, long ago, when I was in my early teens.
Cost me 25 pounds, a veritable king's ransom for me back then. Had to borrow several months pocket money in advance from my mum, and do extra time helping with work in the garden. 😜
The entire sword is still in totally original condition and to this day retains a razor sharp edge, it's clearly never been resharpened.
Pure testament to the natural quality of 'Hittite' steel.
The Bronze age or an Ulfberht are completely different moments in time.
@@andriesscheper2022: An irrelevance to the point I made.
I seem to remember a section of Tacitus’ writings where he describes Roman soldiers stepping back out of the front line to straighten their iron/munitions grade steel swords. I think that’s such an evocative image.
As you mentioned, making very long blades is easier with steel than bronze. The Jian family shows that evolution over time; with there being a model of Warring States Period Chu Jian that predates other long swords.
Bronze was pretty much gone/outdated by the time carbon steel made long blades asweknowthemtoday.
Swords get longer over time
13:20 lol at the horse pissing on the fallen foe in the relief sculpture 😅
'stones [...] usually made of [...] stone'
Gave me a chuckle.
The chicken is made of chicken.
Oh my god thank you so much! I had a memory of seeing that movie some time in the 70s when I was maybe 10 years old that's stuck with me all this time and have been trying to figure out for decades what it was. For some reason the line "It cuts through our Egyptian copper like a knife through straw" (from a few minutes after the scene you showed) must have really made an impression on me, because it's literally the only thing I remembered. As an adult and with no context I figured they were talking about Damascus steel vs iron or something, so that probably hindered the searches I've done for this movie over the years.
But no longer! Finally I can put this (extremely trivial) question to rest! 🤓
Thanks again!
Iron was adopted not because it was better, in fact at the time with the technology available, iron was worse than bronze. Rather it was adopted because the collapse of the Bronze Age super powers lead to a collapse in the trade networks that made bronze smelting on large scale possible.
This is incorrect. Iron was better even then, the issue was the time required to work it. Bronze was very expensive but could be converted to weapons very quickly (dozens per day per cast). Iron was very cheap, but it took a long time to create anything with it (a very skilled smith/smelter would take days per sword from Ore to Sword, or if the iron was already separated it would likely still be 1ish sword per day). When the bronze age collapsed, the weapons pipe lines changed, but that doesnt mean the iron weapons were worse.
I love your videos like this where you dissect old movies for historical accuracy or review fights
The Iron Age's start is conventionally placed at 1200 BC.
The oldest iron-smelting site in the world dates at least to 2000 BC in Africa in Nsukka Eastern Nigeria.
The Iron Age date starts when humans develop the technology to be able to smelt the material efficiently, not when iron was first extracted from ore.
Yes, there is a pretty convincing case for that.
But iron did not take off immediately, everywhere. I'd love to find out how prevalent it became in Africa back then. It requires certain other favorable circumstances to really kick off an iron age It's a bit like wheeled toys being found in South America in a culture that never took the wheel to full size and common usage--or the Romans inventing a steam engine, but using it only as a cool toy.
African Archeology is in its infancy and is sure to produce exciting discoveries in the near future!
There’s earlier sites in west-central Africa. Besides, Iron was independently invented in India, China and the steppes simultaneously.
It has been other places too around that time, the issue is that it appears in places then disappears. People get conquered and knowledge is lost because people die or are displaced. The person with the good ideas does not always have the better armies.
@@MTNwanderings People tend to forget that the long arc of human progress is not a linear thing, that there are stumbles and falls and sometimes knowledge is lost for years, decades, and centuries.
When I saw the title of your vid, I knew you would show that scene from the Egyptian. hahah Bravo. I do like your full content on the whole process, quite interesting.
Those wireless mics still look like clothes anti-theft security tags to me. :D
RFID cancer magnet
Excellent analysis, well done.
The oldest bits of steel was discovered in a spartan foundry hundreds of years after the Hittites.
Always wanted more info on this!! Thanks!!
Since iron and steel are so labor intensive where bronze could be melted, cast, and immediately outfit soldiers it's easy to understand how everyone kept using bronze. Also very likely: bronze withstands the ages far longer than iron and steel that rust away quite rapidly and thus evidence becomes fleeting.
On the last point, there is a Bronze Age sword in Ireland (ROM no.909.68.1) cast @ 1000-700 BC, that was last carried into battle by one of the rebels in the 1798 AD rebellion. He seems to have used it more as a farm tool than a primary weapon, but did bring it as a backup before dying at New Ross.
Even completely corroded away iron still leaves an archaeological trace. In ancient boats, we know mostly what they looked like and how they were built from the stains of iron nails that had held together long rotted away wood.
Have you ever work-hardened bronze? Neither have I but from the videos I've seen, it's a pretty lengthy and labor intensive process. So it's not quite like the swords came straight out of the molds and into the hands of soldiers!
Hi Matt, so far as I have read, being specific to the Battle of Kadesh，the technological advantage the Hittite had was the heavier and sturdier chariot that could support 3 soldiers instead of 2 like the Egyptian’s. And it is hypothesised that it is the application of iron on axles and shafts that allows the Hittites to design a heavier “shock” chariot, despite the lack of direct archeological evidence but just contextual ones. Just my 2 cents
Also I think for covering the wheels.
0:22 no safety glasses mind you...
PPE wasn't even mandatory until 1974 (in england at least)
@@G36C-556 what do you think a sword is?? Lol. It's used for personal protection... (drops the microphone and walks off stage as the crowd goes wild)
@@IntoTheOutside000 I would recommend investing in some personal protection soon
@G36C-556 as an industrial maintenance technician, I personally choose glock
@IntoTheOutside000 very good choice
Phenomenal video! Fascinating and well discussed. Just subbed to your channel.
I've heard the same story; that when the Mongol met Japanese swordsmen they had their swords cut in half.
GLORIOUS NIPPON STEEL!!!1one
I thought it was Mongol machine gun barrels...
One of my fave movies, I wondered about the toughness of the iron blades over the bronze. Thanks for the vid.
16:31 INTERNET BLASPHEMY!
I worked in the metal pouring department (pouring and running the crane up close and personal!) at a fine art bronze foundry and you're right, bronze sculptures are very soft. We used a bronze called "Everdur" which is easily worked and bent to align the panels and piece the statue together. it wouldn't be a good bronze for a sword at all!
The Hittites made the first Katana and it cut thru the Egyptian swords, armour and even the Chariots where cut in half with one cut.
What rubbish! Go ahead get the best steel sword you can get hold of. And chop through all of the above in one swing. And I.ll eat your sword. Words are cheep.
Pfff, that's nothing. Some jewish guy had a hittitana sooo sharp he cleft the red sea in two.
6 million fathoms
Evidence please.
Hmm...sounds like the History Channel, or some other purveyor of fake history.
Yes; I did enjoy your video, also learned from it. Congrats!
Love bronze. Love busting myths. Thanks!
How is there edge retention may I ask y
This has been very informative!
The swords in that 1954 movie look better than what we see for the period in some of today's movies. Swords are kinda sorta like pistols. Get way more attention than their actual use in today's battles would justify. Useful for pilots, aircrews, security, and law enforcement. Some tier one folks. Not so much for grunts. Their best use is for fighting your way to a shotgun or rifle.
Movie hero: Aha, a pistol! I can use this to fight my way to the museum to get a sword...
What movie is it?
@@Disgruntled_Grunt The Egyptian (1954) which is adaptation of novel of same name written by Mika Waltari
It depends on the time period. Old Egypt or a Greek phalanx? Yes. But the Roman gladius was the standard infantry weapon.
@@GeneralCalculus Ah, thanks
Thanks for the information in this video ⚔️
"Perhaps we should look for more fallen stars. Maybe there are many rocks that no man had seen fall?"
"Nah bro, I got mud to pound."
Mud pounders 🤢
Great video debunking iron/mild steel vs bronze. It seems that bronze was good enough to have been used alongside iron/steels for centuries across Eurasia, and was gradually displaced by the gradually increasing consistency, mass production, and cheaper production of higher quality irons/steels. In ancient China, Iron (or some type of steel) swords were made as early as the late Zhou Dynasty to Spring and Autumn era in the 700s BC or earlier...but some types of bronze weapons were used into the 200s BC. I have read discussions on historum forums (on topics such as Middle Eastern and Chinese bronze, iron, etc) where people say people commonly "accidentially" made steel since natural carbonization of iron was common.
The Philistine giant Goliath wore bronze armor, a bronze helmet and had an iron tipped spear and iron sword. Nevertheless, the adolescent shepherd David killed Goliath with a stone projectile flung from his sling. David then decapitated Goliath with the giant's own sword. The Philistine warriors fled in fear after witnessing their champion thus slain. Therefore in this famous skirmish, a simple stone weapon overcame a giant clad in bronze armor and wielding iron weapons.
and Legolas PWNED oh so many orcs with elegant headshots.
I saw a Lex Friedman podcast with a historian that studied Alexander's armor, which was made of hardened cloth. He claimed that the later adoption of iron allowed the advent of sharper arrowheads that would be able to penetrate this type of armor, thus making it lose favor over the following years. So, could "sharpness" be a factor giving a good advantage?
Does anyone else think the guy introducing the iron sword has the mannerism of a Vulcan? lol
Lol, Sinhue knew how Herenheb would react. When you know the future you don't need to be afraid.
Because it was the same theatrical acting style of early(ish) film and TV (StarTrek).
The evidence of the hittites, developing an abundance of iron weapons and implements can be seen in only 1 place. That 1 place excludes the type of iron forging that you would normally see in the middle and dark ages or the bulk of the iron ages as it would be called.
That evidence is the lack of a resource that should be found in the area that the Hittite Empire covered. That resource is iron, nodules, or round balls of condensed iron that can be heated and relatively easily hammered into shape to the point of creating a very good, high-grade iron implement/weapon. In some cases, even low-grade steel.
The area that Empire existed in should have been covered in those nodules. However, it wasn't. This points to someone gathering those nodules. And figuring out how to turn them into implements very quickly and efficiently.
This would free up an abundance of bronze to be used in projectile weapons, armor, and spearheads. It would also give the Hittite soldiers who were fighting on the ground. A decided advantage in close quarters combat. Though I actually doubt they used the iron in swords. As shown in the movie. Chances are the iron would be used to create something more resembling an elongated or stretched ax head. Essentially, creating a cross between an ax and a sword.
It is essentially the freeing up of resources that the use of iron under those circumstances would allow them to have an advantage.
For an example of those iron nodules found in locations where they were not gathered up in mass and used for iron weapons. Here is an example of somebody who came across some while exploring canyons.
ruclips.net/video/FmhV0Isktj0/видео.htmlsi=38b-fsK1CEhzMbLL
To win wars, children study battles. Adults study logistics.
Those iron nodules at 5:15 in that condition can be gathered up like a crop heated in the same way bronze is heated under the same conditions. Using the same forging techniques. The only difference is instead of pouring it into a mold, you just hammer it into shape when it's hot enough. The iron doesn't have to be at the melting temperature either.
From my perspective as a former model and pattern maker is that I suspect most of the moulds for bronze casting would have been SAND castings, not from stone moulds. Why? Because stone moulds take a LOT of work to make. And don't have the ability to create some of the complex shapes of bronze castings that are present in the archaeological record. There is also no pattern used to make stone casting moulds, as the stone is simply pecked or chiseled away to make the cavity. Patterns are fantastic, as they allow one to fabricate an object out of wood, or indeed wax (cire perdue) and create stunningly complex forms for the molten metal to flow into. There is no direct archaeological evidence of sand castings left preserved for us to look at specifically because A) they were made of just sand in a core box, and so would be easily lost over time. B) sand castings are almost always destroyed after the molten metal has been poured into it, and allowed to cool. The sand of the mould is invariably just hammered/knocked away to allow access to the product inside the mould.
Excellent points. I'd wonder if arrowheads and even spearheads might be worth carving into stone, though. An army of tens of thousands, or hundreds or thousands, might go through millions or arrows. Being a fairly simple shape would probably make it quick work for a stone-carver, which was a more common job back when everyone was building giganting monuments everywhere.
Yes indeed, for simpler items, I totally agree stone moulds would be much more appropriate, given the numbers and simplicity of design, as you say. But definitely for swords, daggers, more complex axes and spearheads and a whole host of other goods, I personally feel, sandcasting was used much more frequently than stone. There are even videos on YT, in places like India and Pakistan where the ancient traditions of sand and lost wax castings are still practiced and handed down through the family business. Fascinating process.
As a child I was crazy about the Hittites, I absolutely loved them, and I do remember mentions of them using iron, in books, websites and documentaries, but never as a main factor in their territorial expansion. A technology which I do remember presented as their major advantage is that of chariot design allowing for more weight to be carried on each chariot. That does make some sense in my mind even now
Even as a 5 years old I did think that such superior design would gave been copied by enemies after the first battle
Yo I saw your literal twin in Leeds earlier.
I was in Leeds today 🤣
@@scholagladiatoria Haha hope you had a good time at the armouries then!
Maybe Matt's doppelgänger was following him around Leeds? :-O
I was filming at the Royal Armouries all yesterday and then had an hour at the end to check out the galleries.
Great film Matt, the opening made me laugh
The ages weren't what people think. Iron was around AND IN USE at the same time for FAR longer than most people realize.
Yes, he mentions that
In the old Egyptian museum, everyone was amazed by Tut-Anch-Amun's famous gold mask, but hardly one paid attention to his iron dagger. It is among the oldest iron pieces in the world forged from a meteorite.
Bronze weapons were superior to early iron and even early steel weapons. People could work iron for centuries before the iron age, they rarely did so when bronze was available because bronze was superior.
The issue is that while copper is common, tin is not. The bronze age required a vast trade structure, without this trade structure, there is no tin, without tin there is no bronze. Once the tin trade collapsed, the bronze age ended as well, because the economy was based on that trade, so more than just the production of bronze goods were affected.
The iron age began because a replacement for bronze was now needed, not because iron was superior to bronze. Iron was superior to the alternative of copper only weapons and tools.
Bronze is also readily remelted and cast.
This movie scene has lived rent free in my head for 2/3 of my life
Matt is right. The poem Odissey, for example is set in the bronze age, but its people perfectly know iron: indeed, there is a verse where Odisseos throws and arrow between the rings of some iron axes. Wrought iron at their time were a low quality metal used for common tools, while tin bronze was a noble metal used for swords, spear heads and armors, with superior mechanical qualities, and more tarnish resistance. Meteorites apart, indeed, most part of copper came from chalcopirite (CuFeS2) smelting and the iron sponge was a by-product of this process: it was impossible that bronze age coppersmiths didn't know it. Alloyed with small amount of phosphorous, tin bronzes can reach mechanichal properties that can match mediavel crucible steels, and phosphorous was very easy to alloy with copper and tin, just by adding ashes or mineralized bone powder to the crucible (Chinese bronze age swords contain phopshorous). Just as an example a bronze alloy with 10% tin and 0.15% of phopsporous, which can be easly made in the bronze age, with the proper temper, can reach a tensile strength of 805 MPa, a yield strength of 755 MPa, an elongation at break of 18.5% and a hardness of about 250 Hv, which can be increased to more than 300, by hammering the edges. This is far better than medieval European blooming steels. Earlier wrought iron swords were far worst than the last bronze age swords. But iron is 940 times more abundant than copper and 25000 times mor abundant than tin, so a kingdom with iron swords can equipe a more numerous army and win battles, by outnumbering the opponents armed with higher quality bronze swords. That's way after the distruption of tin supply chain, which caused the end of bronze age, people reverted to produce iron weapons of lower quality but in higher quanitity.
My complimet, Matt, you are a fantastic divulgator!!!
Both Homer, who is claimed being writer of both Odysee and War of Troy, and unknown writer of german Nibelungen tale gave an important message to warriors until our days: No kind of armour can allways protect your life! See Achill and Siegfried.
I like where you're coming from, but one quibble... I'd always assumed that the iron loops in the axes was an anachronism, as Homer lived in the post-Mycenean Iron Age himself.
@@hoi-polloi1863 That is a very debated topic: anachronism v. low quality metal used for common tools. Homer lived in the VIII century BC, so he certainly knew iron and could have made a mistake, by putting iron axes in a bronze age scenario, like a wristwatch in a movie set in the Roman Empire. But, thinking about the process of copper smelting from chalcopirite (CuFeS2), where iron sponge naturally appear as a by-product, IMHO it's very likely bronze age coppersmiths perfectly knew this low-quality metal so prone to rust. And it's also very likely that they had tried to work it: tin was rare and expensive and its long supply chain was a very limiting factor for bronze production, so I suspected that in the late bronze age, bronze was considered a high-cost high-quality alloy used for casting weapons and precious tools for nobles and wrought iron was a low-cost low-quality metal used for forging poor man common tools. Obviously it is only my opinion and it is not easy to prove it, given that bronze tools can last for hundreds of centuries, while iron manufacts deteriorate quickly.
I remember that scene from the Egyptian movie. So, thanks for sharing the light and busting the myth..
More ancient world stuff! Great to see, thank you sir.
My understanding is that the rise of iron weapons had less to do with it being superior to bronze, and more to do with it not requiring tin, which was a rare and hard to come by ore that could only be acquired through extensive trade networks... Iron in contrast, whike being hard to work with, is fairly abundant and can be found in most places.. no need to rely on trade network for your armorments.
Movies are not documentaries (I know there are documentary movies). It is an entertaining kind of art. If people like a movie, it is not BS.
Just found your channel today. You got a Like.
Antenna swords after the collapse of the Bronze Age had less ornate pommels and had a new design more reminiscent of fish tail pommels due to Iron and Steel not being able to form the same complex shapes.
On a similar vain, people were still using napped flint tools and arrowheads thousands of years into the Bronze Age too. It doesn’t just matter how good the material is, it also matters how available, and labour intensive it is to work into something useful
This makes me think of muskets vs rifles. At the beginning of the civil war, Americans were very familiar with rifles but muskets were cheaper and faster to produce and train on, so the soldiers got muskets
Helps musket parts were interchangeable.
More importantly I think, muskets were much quicker to load. I read about an incident where American rifleman ambushed British musketeer. The Americans had the range advantage and got the first shots off, but the surviving British were able to advance to musket range, shoot, fix bayonets, and then charge and route the Americans before they could shoot again.
The two weapons fill different Tactical roles - the equivalent of modern assault rifles vs. sniper rifles.
Chopping is only one flaw, if you hit a softer object repeatedly with an Iron bar, eventually the softer sword bends and becomes useless.
At 12.20: Another of Angus McBryde's illustrations! His style is unmistakable! Give the man the credit he is due (a shame he is no longer with us). But his art lives on all over the Internet.