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Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by InclinedPlane on Friday June 03, 2016 @04:52PM (#11833198)
To make copper from ore you take the ore, which is conveniently typically a very distinctive bright blue/green rock, and you put it in the middle of a hot campfire. The carbon monoxide in the fire reduces the ore and then melting the copper separates it from its impurities. This is similar to the way you'd get tin or lead or several other metals. Then, to make bronze you combine specific weights of raw copper and tin, melt them together, and pour the melted metal into a mold. Now, there are lots of complexities in this process but those are mostly to improve it, and importantly those improvements can be got at through incremental trial and error. This is possible because copper, tin, et al have fairly low melting points compared to the impurities in their ores and compared to silicates (glass), and also because cast bronze is a strong form of bronze.

Iron, on the other hand, is a very different beast. The carbon monoxide trick works just as well with iron, but the relevant working temperatures of iron are way higher than with copper. Which means that you need a more advanced furnace to work with iron. However, the melting point of iron is higher than the melting point of its impurities, so you can't use the same trick you can with copper to purify it. Instead what you have to do is hold iron at around its welding temperature, and you melt the impurities within the iron. What you end up with is an iron "sponge" (or bloom) that you then remove from the furnace and beat with hammers to squirt out all the remaining molten impurities. Worse yet, cast iron is not a particularly good material in comparison to cast bronze, especially for tools and weapons. The proper way to make tools from iron is to make steel, and to forge it (heating it and beating it with hammers and other implements into shape). There are yet additional complexities involving quenching and cooling that can greatly affect the material properties of forged steel. All of these things are very much unlike bronze working and also require a lot of non-obvious steps to improve the process from one step to the next.

All of which is why the bronze age lasted for such a long time, even though some elements of iron working were known (from, for example, working with meteorites). The big advantages of iron working are that the materials (iron ore, etc.) are fairly common everywhere if you know where to find them (compared to the rarity of tin) and iron/steel implements can be mended and recycled extremely easily, even in the field.

As a side note, Tutankhamun is an interesting figure largely due to his father, Akhenaten, who completely upset the entire Egyptian religious system. Akhenaten demanded that the egyptians worship him directly, and he in turn worshiped the god Aten, forsaking all other gods in the egyptian pantheon. This was a big deal due to the importance of the religious bureaucracy at the time, among other reasons. When Tutankhamun (originally Tutankhaten) came to rule after his father's death he restored the old ways, including the importance of the religious establishment. It's thought by many that king tut's lavish funeral gifts are in large part from the religious order, as a thank you to bringing them back to prominence and power.

Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by rsync on Saturday June 04, 2016 @02:22AM (#11835208)
"As a side note, Tutankhamun is an interesting figure largely due to his father, Akhenaten, who completely upset the entire Egyptian religious system. Akhenaten demanded that the egyptians worship him directly, and he in turn worshiped the god Aten, forsaking all other gods in the egyptian pantheon. This was a big deal due to the importance of the religious bureaucracy at the time, among other reasons. When Tutankhamun (originally Tutankhaten) came to rule after his father's death he restored the old ways, including the importance of the religious establishment."

Which is the origin of his name. We write "Tutankhamun", but his name is literally "Tut-Ankh-Amun" - the Ankh of Amun, or the life of Amun (the God he restored).

"Tutankhamun means "Living Image of Amun"."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun

Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by oblio on Friday June 03, 2016 @05:07PM (#11833281)
However strange this might seem on the news site of a Silicon Valley VC hub, this comment is truly worthy of HackerNews.

Thank you, sir, for this insightful post!

Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by InclinedPlane on Friday June 03, 2016 @05:26PM (#11833381)
There's plenty in there that's directly applicable other than just generally interesting. History of technology stuff aside, there's a lesson in the bronze/iron age transition in regards to A/B testing driving development and even agile. It's practically impossible to A/B testing evolve your way from bronze working to iron working, and it's difficult to do so even if you're doing directed development using an agile model. You have to try different things and have diverse, competing projects if you want to make that leap, and you have to allow time for new technologies to reach maturity. That has applicability not just in providing enough resources to develop "next gen" platforms or what-have-you but also in avoiding committing too early to something new before it's fully baked. Even if you could see the hypothetical advantages of iron working way back in the mid-bronze age it didn't make sense to switch until much later.

Some technological advancements are easy to access, others require a lot more investment to mature, and often it's the second category which are superior. Given the general lack of investment in serious R&D by most of SV, and how much the tech industry in general has backed away from pure research, I think there are some applicable lessons there.

Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by dominotw on Friday June 03, 2016 @04:55PM (#11833216)
> Tutankhamun is an interesting figure largely due to his father, Akhenaten

No. he is famous because his tomb was found intact by Howard carter.

Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by dragonwriter on Friday June 03, 2016 @05:01PM (#11833256)
"Famous" and "interesting" are two different things.
Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by dominotw on Friday June 03, 2016 @07:24PM (#11833970)
eh my brain swapped interesting for famous. to make up for that comment here is an interesting tidbit .

The word chemistry/alchemy comes from ancient word for Egypt - Khmet, because they were such experts at metal.

Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by dredmorbius on Friday June 03, 2016 @07:40PM (#11834034)
Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by philwelch on Saturday June 04, 2016 @01:59AM (#11835141)
In domino's defense, being the son of Akenaten isn't necessarily all that interesting in itself. Akenaten is the interesting one; Tutankhamun is just a short-lived pharaoh who returned to normalcy. He's like the Gerald Ford of pharoahs.
Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by dominotw on Saturday June 04, 2016 @10:18AM (#11836412)
>Tutankhamun is just a short-lived pharaoh who returned to normalcy.

Do you think he was he was too young( too developmentally challenged?) to be making such momentous decisions. I've heard that it was mostly his mentors and generals ( HOremHeb ?) making those decisions.

Re:King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms by philwelch on Saturday June 04, 2016 @01:08PM (#11837025)
I'm not an Egyptologist but Tutankhamun was 9 when he became Pharoah and it's hard to imagine any civilization letting a 9 year old actually run things. I'm sure there was a long regency. Keeping in mind his reign (and life) suspiciously ended at age 18, the circumstantial evidence would suggest that he was never really in charge.