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Thibaudborny t1_j6hdn4d wrote

Reply to comment by Gerasans in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

Probably not, why makes you think that? Bronze is indeed better than iron, but consider that the differences relate to usage/application. You can't, say, build skyscrapers with bronze, rather you'd need steel alloys for that. Similarly, there is a reason weapons are steel and statues are bronze. So sooner or later you'll hit a bottleneck in terms of usage, making it very unlikely we'd stick around with bronze forever.

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Gerasans t1_j6ibqyb wrote

I just read that one of the main reasons why humans switched from bronze to iron is that iron ores are widely available, so after we could not made bronze - we need to replace it. What if we wouldn't have needs to replace it?

Also there were no needs to build skyscrapers in middle ages and ancient times.

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Thibaudborny t1_j6if4ij wrote

You are correct, but you said 'would we still be in the bronze age', that implies society would've halted at bronze. In any case, the point remains: different alloys serve different purposes. So, assume the easier availability of bronze was a thing, at some point society would reach a point where the ends were no longer met by it. The reasons could be various, but it is hard to imagine human ingenuity would just stop innovating. Consider martial purposes, steel is far better than bronze, assume iron was not relied on that much, the chances of discovering steel are quite likely & and subsequently, so would the urge be to apply it. Hence, my point is that if more availability was around it would plausibly allow the usage of bronze to stick around longer, that is until a superior alloy (like steel) was discovered. No warrior in his right mind is going to choose bronze over steel.

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