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I wasn't even aware things were really made of metal before like 2,000 years ago. Crazy!

Is there a history of metal somewhere? Bronze, copper, tin, steal, gold, harvesting, forging, etc. It would be an interesting read of history, science, and discovery.





Wasn't 2000 years ago basically the height of the Roman Empire?


Yes, and 2000 years before that you have the Egyptians, who also had metal swords.

Wikipedia tells me that the earliest artifacts of metal comes from 7000 years ago.


ROMANES EUNT DOMUS


People called Romane they go the 'ouse?


The Romans they go the house?


I suppose so, but that doesn't tell me anything.

Edit: Downvotes? I'm expressing my own naivety. Not everyone has intuition of the heights of empires and what that means for metal usage.


It's nearly impossible to grow up in Western culture (no experience with others) and not have some extremely basic Asterix-level understanding of what the Romans were and when they lived.

And that they basically copied large chunks of their own culture from Greece which invented democracy a few centuries earlier.

I mean, even Christian fundamentals have that context based on their lecture of the Christ saga.

It's all fundamentally what our own culture is based on in the West, just look at Washington DC and the buildings. Or Wall St. The Greco-Roman influence is permeating the West.


Sure this is true when you sit and explicitly consider all of it. My comment was more about the intuition of it all. A lot of people don't carry it in their head.

If you took a random sampling of American's and asked them "when did people start using metal," what do you think the average response would be? I'd expect the answers to range from one hundred years ago to a million years ago.

It's nearly impossible to grow up in Western culture and not have some extremely basic asterix-level understanding of geography, yet we have people who literally cannot name a single country on a map of the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umpalMtQE50

But if you made them pause and consider the map, and you highlighted the US and asked pointedly, "This is the US, right?" Probably most of them would correctly say yes.

This is the difference between highlighting and consideration vs. not. Many people (most?) aren't going to have the thought of "when did humans start using metal?" It's a very specific question. Until they really consider it, for many it will be assumed to be within some ridiculous range.

Have you pointedly considered every historical question in the universe? If not, what wildly incorrect assumptions might you be making about history? If there are any (there are), then you shouldn't be so judgmental of others' assumptions about some things.

To me, when I think of metal I think of computers, cars, train rail, braces, buildings. When I think old, I think stone. When I think Roman, I think old, therefore stone. "Height of the roman empire" doesn't even work in changing this perception. How long did the roman empire exist? (The assumption for falls into the same wild range predicament.) I guess they had metal coins, but did they have them the whole time if it was an empire that existed for a long time? Metal I guess was used in the middle ages right? So like, maybe towards the far-late stage of the Roman empire, like 500 AD?

It's just an unhelpful comment and criticism that comes from the perspective of believing everyone's brain should act like the commenter's.


The subtext is that the Romans weren't beating on each other with clubs.


You're making the same mistake. What did they use, spears? Can't you make spears from wood and stone?

I guess you must mean swords, but I feel that the subtext of your comments is humble-bragging how obvious these things are to you.

See my comment to your sibling comment by neuronic.


2000 years ago is an easy one. Hint: if you want to nail a guy to a cross, you'll need to work some metal!




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