| I was with you until the last point... > Just like modern steel would produce a katana infinitely better than folded crappy steel that the originals were trying to overcome That's not an undisputed fact. There has been a lot back and forth about the lost knowledge of previous generations and the romans supposedly used a superior cement which we can no longer replicate. but to stay closer to your example: while the smelting of the metal has seen a lot of study, that doesn't mean that we're able to produce a superior katana. You also need the smithing -- and need to figure out how the metal should be. That's of course possible, but hasn't really seen much study. So while we could theoretically produce an infinitely better katana -- thats not practical because of the money investment to figure out what that actually means. Most enthusiast say that current katanas are at best on par with the old ones, often sub-par. |
We can produce steels today with much better metallurgical properties by design. Japanese steel at the time used the folding technique to overcome low carbon content. Thats all my point entailed. And as to what enthusiasts think, all I can counter with is the audiophile community. I wouldn't take their view without some salt especially without some comprehensive analysis. Steel from Spain at the time was also vastly superior to the steel being used in Japan.
Ref: https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/mechanical-propertie...
Quote: The material and mechanical properties of samurai swords (Japanese swords), made using a traditional steelmaking technology (tatara), are investigated experimentally. The quality of these swords appears to be low because of the presence of a large number of inclusions, including oxide- and phosphorus-based structures; however, their mechanical properties are relatively good because of their fine-grained structure and high residual stress.
endquote
Also, take the metallurgical properties of turbine blades, there are alloys we can only recently produce based on analysis of bonds between the atoms. While its posssible a past civilization could have come up with these alloys, the neither needed them, and lacked the requisite knowledge to make them.
And the roman cement was largely a product of materials. Aka volcanic ash. We lost it only in that the inputs were largely lost. But this all digresses mostly into arguing analogies which is a bit of a rat hole.