How Africans smelt iron and make a hoe in a day or two

These guys are amazing they walk out into the bush, get some hard wood with a high calorific value, make the charcoal, then use a termites nest to make a small foundry, then make bellows which they pump, and get a lump of iron. Which they forge into simple agricultural tools.It makes you think who will still be going after a real collapse.

Considering the Kentucky long rifle was made at home with a hunk of iron, if these guys had a few more tricks they would have started the industrial revolution.

a reply to: anonentity

And in a 100 years the local government regulations will prevent them from doing it.

Yeah Africa full of brain surgeons! Just look how technologically advance that country is. My favorite invention is the cow piss shower, just brilliant I tell ya!!

a reply to: anonentity

Modern smelting and forging work on the very same principal, just on an industrial scale. If you want to make something metal that is.

Edit: If you want to talk refinement, there are very few people alive today that can match the skill of ancient sword makers.

See this documentary for clarity...

Very skilled and innovative. Finally leaving the stone age and figuring out how to smelt iron. Just imagine where they will be in about 5000 years.

a reply to: Mark08

Detroit.

originally posted by: WUNK22
Yeah Africa full of brain surgeons! Just look how technologically advance that country is. My favorite invention is the cow piss shower, just brilliant I tell ya!!

I won't jump all over you because I don't know if you are being mean out of ignorance but i'll lay some info on your table, it's up to you to view read and think things through from there., but after this date there can be no feigning of ignorance without being brutally challenged.
Actually Africa do have it's share of brain surgeons, engineers etc, I personally know one brother from Nigeria who is designing satellite for a Japanese firm and yet another who solved a 30yrs old math equation

Nigerian student solves historically difficult maths equation in first semester at university

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www.huffingtonpost.co.uk...

An while the dudes in the vids did it the old way, don't think that's how much of Africa is still doing things, you may wanna look at this thread from a few yrs back.

African Skylines..The Other Africa

www.abovetopsecret.com...


And more ancient and medieval developments

ost Cities And Architecture Of Pre-Colonial Africa.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

This a trailer but you can see the entire series on youtube.


.

a reply to: intrptr

excellent Docu. the "Ulfberht" sword

a reply to: Mark08


Theirs more to it than that. I notice that the Dogon were not that far away, they had some pretty advanced ideas. For any naysayers, I challenge you to walk into the bush and come out with a piece of iron! To my mind that was more like steel they were making, reducing it in the carbon charcoal would have elevated the iron into a mild steel. Looking at the way it was getting pounded it looked slag free and pretty useful stuff. A decent anvil, in a organised workshop they would be away.
in fact what we have just seen in that Vid. The simple facts as presented have just told the viewer if a calamity hits as it has done in the past ,and will do so again in the future, that you can get back into the iron age in a few skilful steps. They have my respect.

No need to jump, just stating the facts. Africa is a complete failure of a country. Always at war, haven't invented a thing, barely got out of mud huts. Great one or two people achieved something, well yeehaa for them. I know, I know, the reason for there failures is the evil white men who have always exploited them. Sorry but there's nowhere in Africa I'd even consider living in, maybe South Africa 40 years ago. Now it's a hell hole im told from people who have fled with their lives. Ok, now's the part I'm called racist.........

a reply to: WUNK22

Now I'll jump on you, because you have info at hand, you apparently haven't looked at and only ppl who think Africa is a country are dunces..are you a dunce??..racist?? I have no idea if you are or who you are ,or how you regard folks that may look different from you, but whoever you are, right now you are being willfully ignorant.

a reply to: Spider879


Wunk? I think you have you vowel in the wrong place.

I am staying way the hell out of this thread because of the ignorance being passed around. But, that is very neat that they are going old school with that. Me and the ol' lady were just talking about how these mass produced hoes aren't worth a crap. On another note, you guys arguing whether Africa is just a war torn country or a country that is brimming with excellence in need of direction are both incorrect. Africa is a continent.

Welcome to the Iron Age.

When society collapses, we will all rush to the hunter gatherers.

HALP!

originally posted by: Mark08
Very skilled and innovative. Finally leaving the stone age and figuring out how to smelt iron. Just imagine where they will be in about 5000 years.

Back on top. The other 'highly developed civilizations' will have destroyed each other by then, leaving the suppressed resource rich regions of the world (like Africa) to blossom.

a reply to: intrptr

I don't see how a bunch o cell phone using individuals, probably not a day or two out side a city will be any better off than anyone else 5kyrs from now, folks all over this planet still have ancient expertise in something , which is a good thing should stf , but more than likely it will become a lost technology.

a reply to: Spider879

That was his point. He was saying the people who live on the land and make their own tools will take ascendancy in the future. I tend to agree. Most westernised people will die off when the 'Use By' date of the last tinned can expires. It's the nature of history and technology won't last without passing on the knowledge.

People around the world will simply readjust whereas most of us will be royally screwed if the power went off.

Empires fall and others rise etc. Obviously, this is lost on a lot of ATSers who still argue how 'Africa never did anything in its whole history.' Idiots doing their thing

a reply to: Kandinsky

Jeez I am dead as a door nail, can't even split wood properly..
But yeah I got the point.

a reply to: Spider879

Likewise. Gone from building sites to white-collar worker with hands that are now as soft as a puppy's ears.

a reply to: intrptr\



The question has got to be asked, "What is Civilisation all about?" Does one have a more meaningful life , learning skills like being able to walk into a forest, and come out with an ocean going ship in a few months, and even better being able to make nails to stick it together. Or what we are now, at the point where if the power grid went down we would be totally #ed, and at a place worse than the stone age?