Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by AlotOfReading 1699 days ago
I don't think they'd remember the tips about smallpox, considering it hadn't evolved yet. As for iron smelting, we have a wealth of experimental archaeology on the subject under much easier constraints than you're proposing. The DARCs team [1] took 4 years to figure out a usable bloomery based on archaeologically known designs and years of prior experience, and it took a decade more to get all the modern materials out of the design. You could certainly cold-work iron if you could identify the right meteors, but those are rare and notoriously difficult to find [2].

All I'm saying is that you're vastly underestimating the knowledge, skill, and cultural context that went into these technologies.

[1] http://www.warehamforge.ca/ironsmelting/

[2] https://sites.wustl.edu/meteoritesite/items/some-meteorite-r...