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.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Quite true, I'm going to cheat with magic on that score.

Funny, I was going to suggest just fudging everything and people probably won't notice :)

Quick Look at LowTech gives me this and I highlighted a few things that might be affected by IRON not being around or plentiful.

The talk of titanium though makes me wonder what a titanium rich world would be like. Anyway.

TL2: THE IRON AGE (1200 B.C.+) <-- Probably would be called "THE MORE BRONZIER AGE"
Signature Technology: Iron.
Other Technologies: Riding horses and mounted herdsmen; concrete; large glass objects; arches, vaults, and domes; early water mills; theoretical mathematics; humoral medicine.
Social Organization: Multiethnic empires; founding of universal religions; philosophy; historical scholarship; coinage.
War: Cavalry; war elephants; phalanx warfare; mechanical artillery; specialized war galleys.


TL3: THE MIDDLE AGES (600 A.D.+)

Signature Technology: Steel.
Other Technologies: Three-field rotation; moldboard plow; heavy horses; flying buttress; windmills and widely used water mills; distillation; compasses; numerals with zero.
Social Organization: Universal religions; monasticism.
War: Mounted knights; castles; counterweight
mechanical artillery; early black-powder weapons.


TL4: THE AGE OF SAIL (1450 A.D.+)

Signature Technology: Full-rigged ships.
Other Technologies: Cast iron; the printing press; telescopes; celestial navigation; early synthetic medications.
Social Organization: Nation-states and absolute monarchy; overseas empires; widespread literacy.
War: Cannon; musket and pike; early bayonets; formal military drill; sailing warships armed with cannon; star forts replace castles.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

The talk of titanium though makes me wonder what a titanium rich world would be like.

That could be interesting, I encourage investigation. Though while an earlier discovery seems quite plausible it seems like you would be stuck with titanium carbide for quite some time.

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

B]TL2: THE IRON AGE (1200 B.C.+)[/B] <-- Probably would be called "THE MORE BRONZIER AGE"

: )

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Hypothetiland is a different, otherwise earthlike planet.

That's actually pretty difficult - iron is after all one of the most common metals in the universe for reasons having to do with how nucleosynthesis work. And if your planet is somehow miraculously short of it, it can't have a dense core, which means it's either low gravity or huge. And if it's huge you start facing limits to rotation rates that make short earthlike days a problem. And many iron ore deposits were bioconcentrated by the same organisms responsible for the oxygen atmosphere, so you may not have breathable air, and....

Eliminating iron is not really good way to approach this. Declaring exploitable near surface deposits enough rarer it would cost 10 (or 100 or whatever) times what it does on Earth works nearly as well and is much less likely to get you into trouble. That's actually fairly easy to do really - just invert the reasons for most of them to exist in the first place, and have micro-organisms that like it - even if they don't chew it up very fast, after a few geologic periods....

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

Quick Look at LowTech gives me this and I highlighted a few things that might be affected by IRON not being around or plentiful.

TL2: THE IRON AGE (1200 B.C.+) <-- Probably would be called "THE MORE BRONZIER AGE"
Signature Technology: Iron.
Other Technologies: Riding horses and mounted herdsmen; concrete; large glass objects; arches, vaults, and domes; early water mills; theoretical mathematics; humoral medicine.
Social Organization: Multiethnic empires; founding of universal religions; philosophy; historical scholarship; coinage.
War: Cavalry; war elephants; phalanx warfare; mechanical artillery; specialized war galleys.

Not going to affect mechanical artillery; it was made initially of wood, and later got springs made of sinew. Coinage is probably okay too, as gold and silver and bronze are all nonferrous.

Bill Stoddard

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by malloyd

That's actually pretty difficult - iron is after all one of the most common metals in the universe for reasons having to do with how nucleosynthesis work. And if your planet is somehow miraculously short of it, it can't have a dense core, which means it's either low gravity or huge. And if it's huge you start facing limits to rotation rates that make short earthlike days a problem. And many iron ore deposits were bioconcentrated by the same organisms responsible for the oxygen atmosphere, so you may not have breathable air, and....

Eliminating iron is not really good way to approach this. Declaring exploitable near surface deposits enough rarer it would cost 10 (or 100 or whatever) times what it does on Earth works nearly as well and is much less likely to get you into trouble. That's actually fairly easy to do really - just invert the reasons for most of them to exist in the first place, and have micro-organisms that like it - even if they don't chew it up very fast, after a few geologic periods....

Ahh. My actual setting (which is required to make sense, unlike hypothetiland) was not naturally created. It does actually have iron in the core but it isn't otherwise Earth. I fear I misunderstood you a little. What amounts to basically "antibioconcentration" is also involved.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Not going to affect mechanical artillery; it was made initially of wood, and later got springs made of sinew. Coinage is probably okay too, as gold and silver and bronze are all nonferrous.

Though if you make iron rare enough, it's a coinage metal too. It's a little harder to strike coins and they aren't as durable, but no reason it won't work.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Though if you make iron rare enough, it's a coinage metal too. It's a little harder to strike coins and they aren't as durable, but no reason it won't work.

It's rather a waste to tie it up in coins though.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Though if you make iron rare enough, it's a coinage metal too. It's a little harder to strike coins and they aren't as durable, but no reason it won't work.

Sure, but you don't need it to invent coinage.

Bill Stoddard

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

The talk of titanium though makes me wonder what a titanium rich world would be like.

Rather like the earth. Titanium isn't particularly rare, it's the ninth most common element in the Earth's crust and about forty times as common as copper. It's just impractical to isolate at low TL (same reason you don't see low TL aluminum -- aluminum is more common than iron, it's just all bound up in oxides).