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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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You know you are in for a good time when you get to the chapter called "Sexual connotations".
I'm not an expert on the field, so I've read the paper, but am not qualified to draw conclusions from it. But as I read it, the focus is more on the role of ritual and religion in the making of the iron. And the transfer of knowledge through this process and hypothesize the addition of the burning of bone is actually beneficial.
However they do not approach this from a material technology standpoint. So I would love for someone with knowledge on this point to chime in. It's very interesting if the people back in the day knew how to make low carbon iron and the little bit of carbon they did add came from the burning of the bones. But as I see it the burning of the bones is more a ritual kind of thing and getting all of the carbon out of the iron is the harder thing to do, not putting the carbon in.
Bone char isn't super high carbon, so it's possible that either the calcium phosphate or calcium carbonate is playing a roll.
But honestly, you're probably not getting very much of it mixed in from primitive smelting or forging methods.
Low carbon is actually a good thing to help avoid including too much and making the steel brittle.
I am by no means a material scientist or biologist, but I have studied a lot of them and have some curiosities.
It would be interesting to see how calcium doping modified the properties of the alloy. AFAIK the temperatures that iron smelts at is to high for the carbonate or phosphate bonds to remain stable, so most of it should have ended up as free calcium or phosphorus.
I also imagine that the type of bones have a lot to do with it, since avian bones have a different composition and density than say, a moose bone. Different kinds of animals also have evolved different metal doping concentrations.
You've studied a lot of material scientists and biologists? What we talking here? Questionnaires or binoculars in the bushes?
Do you not have a collection of scientists pinned to your wall for display purposes?
Shhhh. You will scare them.