TL 1+x - the never ending bronze age

[DanHoward]

Pressure steam boilers were made from copper alloys for over a century. Temperature might be an issue in a superheated boiler but they never existed till the end of the 19th century. Even if it was a problem, you don't need to use steel. Other metals like aluminum can be used to make these things.

Copper alloys would work fine in a railroad or skyscraper. They would last a lot longer than steel.

[AlexanderHowl]

Bronze would be too expensive for rails though, even if it cost a tenth as much as historically accurate, though you could road land trains (it would be less efficient than railroads, but it would be better than horses). Of course, steam engines would make a lot of things possible (the first use was for pumping water in mines). If copper and tin are common enough that bronze becomes as common as iron, then life as we know it does not evolve because of organotins being ubiquitous in the environment.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Bronze would be too expensive for rails though, even if it cost a tenth as much as historically accurate

The premise is that bronze was as plentiful as iron is in our world so cost would be similar to iron, perhaps even cheaper given that it is easier to smelt.

[pawsplay]

Cannons were made of bronze well up into the early modern era.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

The premise is that bronze was as plentiful as iron is in our world so cost would be similar to iron, perhaps even cheaper given that it is easier to smelt.

Exactly. It seems that cost is the main reason to use steel rather than iron and that - in a world where bronze was significantly cheaper - steel would be restricted to specialist applications.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Anders

steel would be restricted to specialist applications.

Tensile strength. So, cables (where the 10% lower density also helpss, as cables have to hold themselves up along with their useful payload), possibly girders for building (those need both tensile and compressive strength). Probably debates among the engineering nerds over which material you use when, and whether steel is worth the corrosion and maintenance problems even where it's theoretically better :)

I haven't seen much on differences between simpler, lower-tech alloys. It's one thing to look up modern alloys and see that bronze can be as good as a lot of steels in modern catalogs. But how easy are those to make, how precise do the ratios have to be, what other science and techniques do you need to have discovered to make those alloys, what sort of trade networks and chemical industries do you need developed to get the alloying materials? Same questions for steel, of course. Stainless steel has far less problems with corrosion than most bronzes, but it's also not a low-tech product. There might be parts of the TL curve where better versions of one category exist. In the alternate history for the alternate world, early advantages can well focus R&D effort, causing the alternatives to be relatively neglected, and so the full potential of the alternatives might not even be realized where it would be been theoretically possible. (This is of course part of the argument a pro-bronze fan would be making in the real world. That initial cost advantage gave iron enough of a leg up that steel got all the industrial development, regardless of how good bronze alloys might be in the lab. Make the same sort of assumptions in reverse, and shut iron out, if that's the result you want.)

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Anders

Exactly. It seems that cost is the main reason to use steel rather than iron and that - in a world where bronze was significantly cheaper - steel would be restricted to specialist applications.

It would probably appear a bit later, but would probably (by the local equivalent of TL6 or so) become just another metal with its own properties. Just like the modern world has dozens of varieties of steel used for different purposes, and the presence of readily available iron didn't prevent people from experimenting with bauxite. Different types of bronze would just be in that mix in more places.

The question is, assuming no radical difference in cost between bronze and iron, where would (and wouldn't) bronze be used by a TL8 (or 1+7) society?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

The best book on the dodgy chronology and all the problems it has caused is James' Centuries of Darkness. Their proposal for a new chronology has some issues but their central thesis is very convincing - that the chronology we are currently using is wrong.

There have been many theories put forward to explain the cause of the alleged collapse, from climate change to mass migration to earthquakes, and every single one has been comprehensively dismantled. They can't even find evidence for the widely accepted "Dorian invasion" in Greece. Robert Drews' End of the Bronze Age does a good job of summarising these. The reason why nobody can find a cause, even after over a century of study, is because it never happened.

Best book? By the author's own admission it is the only book:

"The only book to provide a serious alternative to the accepted dating of ancient Egypt and the Near East (Bronze to Iron Age). This highly controversial study rocked the foundations of ancient chronology. As a result, Mediterranean and biblical archaeology are now in turmoil." official website to the book

So yes the book is reliable (published by Rutgers University Press) but it seems to have gotten the same kind of serious attention as Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix Press) - a few papers and after a while nothing really changes.

If you really want to get into the debate there is A Hundred Reviews of Centuries of Darkness but I noticed something. There is nothing in that list from this century (2000 is technically the last year of the 20th century) even though the site was "Last modified 12 Aug 2019". So either the author forgot to add discussion material from 2001 to 2019 or there was nothing to add.

Moreover the wikipedia page on the Last Bronze age collapse references peer reviewed works as recent as 2016 (in the American Journal of Archaeology), so what happened?

Originally Posted by DanHoward

The premise is that bronze was as plentiful as iron is in our world so cost would be similar to iron, perhaps even cheaper given that it is easier to smelt.

Supposedly "Steel is one of the hardest substances on the planet. It is certainly much stronger than bronze. This added strength meant that less steel had to be used to ma." So yess Bronze beats iron but well made steel beats bronze.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by maximara

Best book? By the author's own admission it is the only book:

Maybe you should actually read the book and make up your own mind. I've formally studied this subject, widely read other papers on this subject, published a textbook on this period, and have no hesitation citing their research.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Maybe you should actually read the book and make up your own mind.

I have seen that line too many times regarding stuff like Chariots of the Gods and the like. :-)

Seriously, until recently textbooks (of all things) were claiming Columbus sailed west to prove the Earth was round. Or how about everybody's favorite tinfoil hat magnet the Bermuda Triangle which depends on distorted or manipulated information to even exist?

Let's face is, New Chronology (Rohl), as it is called on wikipedia, has gone exactly nowhere.

Originally Posted by DanHoward

I've formally studied this subject, widely read other papers on this subject, published a textbook on this period, and have no hesitation citing their research.

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (2014) is also a textbook (by Princeton University Press) and it reaffirms the Bronze Age collapse theory but takes the perfect storm tact rather then the Sea people chain argument. The author, Eric Cline, PhD, has a video of that name on youtube where he gives the cliff notes.