TL4 Without Iron

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Adam Smith knew little about history and nothing about geology. Iron is found deep in the earth today, but it wasn't in the past. Rio Tinto was once a large iron-laden mountain. Today it is a hole in the ground.

In iron age Europe and north Asia, and North America during the colonial period, a major source of iron was bog iron. That is ore nodules of it are an impurity in with the peat you are cutting to burn - which may be enough to reduce some of it by itself. Not very much of it, but probably enough to discover it that way. It's not something you need to look deep in the earth for.