The 7 Metals Of Fantasy (Based on History) | Worldbuilding
Episode 24: Metals
In this video we discuss worldbuilding metals, where they’re found, how they’re mined, as well as the roles that different metals play in worldbuilding cultures and civilisations.
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I would like to point out that using coal to smelt and work metals in large quantities is a relatively recent phenomenon. Not really until the industrial revolution. For most of human history wood or charcoal was the preferred fuel. Early coal mines had a tendency to flood, which meant that, while people knew about coal and it's potential uses, using it in bulk was much more expensive than using charcoal for the same purpose.
A good point I was about to make as well. There's another issue with coal other than availability: It often cointains quite large amounts of sulfur and would also release large quantities of sut. both would contaminate the metal during the refining process. Refining coal into coke to make it useable in metallurgy afaik only started in the 18th century. The availablity of wood would thus imo be a more important factor for the early developement of metallurgy and mining settlements than coal. Another important factor is transportation. The finest metal deposit is useless if you can't get to it, supply the miners with food and tools and get the metal to a market.
The deforestation of Europe and especially England led to increased coal use. This in turn led to improvements in smelting, because coal burns hotter.
If only there was some way to use Coal to pump water out of a Coal mine...Watt a great idea that would be!
@@HansLemurson An entirely different issue. Making a working - and useful - steam engine requires not only an understanding of physics, but especialy certain manufactruing techiques.
Say it again, but slower 🥵
Just a bit of corrections from a chemist: 1) Coal - most likely, the source of carbon would be not the black coal, but the charcoal. Charcoal pits are known for at least six millenia, charcoal burning is among the oldest known crafts. 2) Iron is also known well before humanity could achieve its smelting. The oldest known worked iron is of meteoritic origin, it can be easily tested by big amount of nickel in it. (Iron in space rocks has around 10% of nickel, but iron ores don't have much nickel). The earliest known iron from iron ore was produced in kilns as well, but since the temperature was not nearly enough to melt the iron, it was formed in the form of 'sponge iron' soaked with shlag. The process is called 'bloomery'. It required a long subsequent process of hammering to squeeze out the slag from the iron sponge.
I figured this vid would discuss the “7 planetary metals” of Alchemy, given the title explicitly calls out 7 metals, and they are all metals that the ancient world had access to. Each was associated with 1 of the 7 classical Planets-any object in the heavens (ie not Earth) that could be seen with the naked eye and had apparent motion relative to the “fixed” stars (including the Sun and Moon). For reference, these were 1. Gold, the Solar Metal 2. Silver, the Lunar Metal 3. Iron, the Martian Metal 4. Quicksilver, the Mercurial Metal (Hence why it’s called “Mercury” today) 5. Tin, the Jovian Metal 6. Copper, the Venusian Metal, and 7. Lead, the Saturnine Metal
pretty cool that iron happened to be the mars metal.
@@BastiatC It was chosen because Iron and its alloys were the metal weapons and armor had been made from since Roman times, and Mars (Roman name for Ares) was the god of War. But yeah, it is awfully fitting that the red planet is covered in iron-rich sands.
@@BastiatC it's probably not a coincidence. people knew that iron rusted, and it turned red when it rusted. they knew mars was red
I was going to say this alchemical list is specific to the Old World, but then I remembered the Inca thought of gold as "Sweat of the Sun" and silver as "Tears of the Moon". An interesting fact by itself. Good you brought up alchemy, though I think the video is long enough as it is, so alchemy-and-metals as a topic - especially with a fictional and differently-configured alchemy - would fill a second video all by itself.
@@luckylmj I wonder if they knew about the bacteria you can find in orange red puddles that can be smelted into iron
There is significant evidence that the first iron ores smelted were from bog iron deposits. Those being layers of oxides that build up along the edges of bogs from iron solutes in the mineral rich water and create stacks of broad flakes.
Check out L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site for more details. The vikings used bog iron and the area has significant deposits.
The norse (vikings) used mostly bog iron. Actual iron mining wasn't established so much in Scandinavia until well after the viking age.
OH! So thats why iron looks like that in valheim!
@@nemtudom5074 very interesting indeed
@@doragonsureia7288 Yeap!
Oh man. This all sounds very important but this is a lot of information to absorb. Probably gonna have to watch this through a couple times.
I understand how you feel, that's how I felt going through the research for this video!
I agree that it is alot to take in, but what it gives you is a science foundation for your worlds make up. Also since a positively HUGH amount of RPG material sources from the concepts of "resource wars" & trade. Much of what is established will very easily drive much of the world's cultural & economic development. Frankly just having the historical metals in place makes it very easy to decide what races would be placed where. Dwarves may have found Placer metals in rivers & then followed them upstream to there more 'pure' deposits. This would give you design freedom.
Watch it through a couple of times for fun like me. :)
This fees like a professor of geology and metallurgy had a writer for a wife that asked for advise on fantasy ore deposit locations. I'd read that book.
Ore man, sounds rough.
One thought for a fantasy setting- it might be worth plotting the locations of undersea ore deposits as well to know what metals might be available to aquatic civilisations (particularly aquatic civilisations capable of amphibious activity, which can function out of water sufficiently to engage in refining metal ores- because forges won't work underwater without magic)
Or, if you are ones interested in alternate techlines, provide a pathway to earlier discovery of electrolysis.
Underwater thermal vents exist, the only get to like 1/3 of the temp of a standard forge but could be a believable starting point. Maybe they found a way to trap and concentrate the heat, it would be a free energy source for their usage.
@@Valkaiden heat vents are gonna turn any Atlantis that tries to use them into fish soup. Water is not just heavy air. It interacts with toxic chemicals and heat entirely differently than air does.
Hydrothermal vents naturally cap out at 464C/867F so those underwater civilizations are likely locked in with smelting lead and tin. Maybe copper with some magic/clever engineering
@@marvalice3455 ah yes, spicy water
Great video! The one thing I'd add is that nickel-iron meteorites can provide small, isolated groups with what is essentially native iron. On earth for example, a group of Inuit around greenland were able to cold-forge iron tools from the Cape York meteorite.
Yup! And King Tut was buried with a meteoric iron dagger, despite ruling a firmly bronze-age kingdom. A lot of folks speculate that such meteorites being worked into iron tools in the copper and bronze ages may have been the source of many tales of magic weapons-cutting through bronze armor, “forged from the heart of a fallen star,” extremely rare, etc.
Bog iron was also important historically.
There's a story in Kalevala (a collection Finnish and Karelian oral folklore at least partly based on real events from around 1000 BCE to 1000 CE) about when the sun fell down. It tells about Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen (two of the main "cast", as a bonus fact Ilmarinen seems to have originally been a god of sky and thunder, but was later described as a blacksmith and inventor) tracking the path of the fallen sun and eventually fishing it, or a part of it, from the middle of a lake and taking it home. It's very likely the story is about the Kaali meteorite, a 20-80 ton iron meteorite that hit Saaremaa in modern Estonia somewhere between 6400 and 400 BCE depending on the dating method. If those later estimates were correct, it would coincide with the start of the Pre-Roman Iron Age in Estonia and Finland around 600-400 BCE.
Fun fact: Iron isn’t definitively better than bronze, the transition was due to scarcity of tin and, later, the ability to produce steels. Iron ore is super plentiful, especially compared to tin. Bismuth Bronze deserves a special mention here. Bronze coincided alongside iron and even steel well into the classical era, with armor frequently being made of bronze. We also see bronze and bronze alloys being used for articles such as mirrors.
Bronze is convenient for tools with it’s relatively low melting point, too. If you have a busted axe head or chisel you can melt it down and recast it pretty easily. Most of the time you can’t really do that with an iron tool.
@@joshuahadamsBut you could re-forge your iron tools, which requires less resources than a foundry and molds.
@@tyrannosaurusimperator cast iron is brittle and prone to oxidation. Bronze is more ductile - it bends rather than shatters - and patinas rather than rusts. If you’re making tools from cast iron, outside of cookware, they’re gonna be something you’re not hitting hard all day. *Edit* Misread your comment. There’s archaeological sites in South America with stone moulds for casting bronze chisels at a work site. You pretty much just need a particularly hot fire, a crucible, and your mould. No forge needed, just a wood fire, some rock you can carve, and an abrasive to do your finish sharpening.
The Mycenaean Greeks imported tin and copper from as far away as Denmark and England all called them the tin islands at the edge of the map. They had iron ore easily accessible the entire time, its just that iron is such a pain to deal with for a marginal gain its not worth it and was considered inferior. (Look up bloomerys, you get a ball of iron and impurities and have to beat the impurities out of it and then beat it into shape. In contrast bronze can be made with a canpfire and then poured into a mould. And its material properties were really good for tools and weapons.) Iron's true potential isn't unlocked until steel, which wasn't mas produced until the Bessemer process. Before then the most famous steel was the katana with its hard steel cutting edge and flexible iron spine. Pre industrial revolution steel was a precious metal, post industrial revolution steel is a building material ideal for bridges and skyscrapers.
However, considering the properties of both metals, isn't some types of steel better than bronze, such as crucible steel for industrial setting or modern spring steel? I ask this because I am thinking about a setting where a bronze-like fantasy ore replaces iron in my "industrial revolution" era. The idea is that given you can cast so many things using the sand mould and lost wax method, given a surplus of bronze, one could industrialize smithing without needing late 18th century technologies such as Maudsley's lathe or Watts' steam engine.
Some notes, smelting is specifically the process of separating metal from the unwanted parts of ore in order to get usable product. Heating up processed metal for the purpose of shaping it is just part of the process of hot working metal, and the device used for that purpose is generally not called a smeltery. Furnace is a more appropriate word here. Secondly copper not only can be cold worked, it's actually the primary way to do it. Working copper while it's hot is difficult because of how soft copper is on its own striking hot copper with a hammer would cause it to deform so much that it would form cracks and voids. You work the copper cold until the stress makes the copper stiff, and then you heat it to a couple hundred degrees Fahrenheit to anneal (soften) it. Simply repeat until you have the desired shape.
of note with aluminum: there was some able to be refined prior to the industrial revolution IRL, thanks to relatively small native deposits. It was considered such a luxury that it was valued even above gold, and heads of state with access to the stuff would often have their own cutlery made of it, leaving gold cutlery for their guests. It wasn't until industrialization came about that we could refine it from bauxite, which is incredibly abundant, and thus it was made practically worthless by comparison to its former grandeur.
That head of state youre talking about is specifically Napoleon
It was not industrialization, but electricity that made aluminium cheap.
@@emilianozamora399 Napoleon III actually.
Not from native aluminium, that doesn't exist. Early aluminium came from a chemical refining process that was extremely inefficient, thus it's rarity. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#History
Also you can mix it up with copper to make aluminium bronze, which is harder than tin bronze, fairly tough, and incredibly beautiful.
One huge mistake made in the video was how you described smelting. It does not require the ore to be melted. In fact, in the case of iron, if your smeltery got hot enough to melt the iron, the whole batch would be ruined because the molten iron would soak up the carbon like a sponge and make cast iron, which could not be decarbonized until the discovery of the finery forge. Copper on the other hand, had no issues when being melted since it didn't absorb carbon, so it was smelted at higher temperatures than iron. Sometimes much higher. Also, you really wouldn't want to use coal for smelting metals because the impurities, mostly sulfur, would ruin the metal. That is why coal wasn't used until after coking was discovered. Prior to that, people would just use charcoal.
Also, mining coal with preindustrial technology is difficult and expensive. One of the first important use of steam engines was un-flooding coal mines.
@Jamie Fletcher It's thought that China never employed bloomery refining and instead employed cold blast furnaces and finery forges, the use of cast iron in low quality tools made the price of those tools drop significantly
I think the most interesting is the Native American copper working civilizations. There was such and abundant amount of native copper that they never reached the point of smelting other metals. An interesting example of how an abundance of a resource can actually lead to slower technological development.
Iirc there was plenty of smelting in the further south you go, there there was both more resources for building and running kilns that could melt metals and populations to support large scale mining. Various copper and gold alloys came up in central and South America with multiple types of bronze being made for both functional and cultural purposes.
There were also some cultural developments where the copper items tended to get more decorative and less practical over time in the north American copper working culture, a counterintuitive but interesting trend.
Yeah, in the Great Lakes area, i think is where there was an abundance of naive copper, which could easily be cold worked. This meant they never got around to smelting it together with tin, even tho there were nearby tin deposits. Meanwhile, down in central & south America it seems that cultures were just beginning to enter a bronze age, with bronze axes apparently being a thing, but I think the transition was slower because those cultures also had an abundance of obsidian, which might be more brittle than bronze, but was also many times sharper, and more integral to the culture. Making the switch just wasn't seen as "worth it" to them. I believe the Mediterranean civilisations had a similar thing going with bronze and iron. Bronze was prettier, easier to maintain and sharpen, especially given they already had the generation of skills and know-how in working with bronze, when compared to iron, which from their point of view only had "it's harder" as a benefit, and nothing else. They entered the iron age begrudgingly, only after it became uneconomical to produce bronze with all the trading networks going poof.
@@109Rage Many of the earliest iron artifacts would have actually been slightly softer than a lot of the high quality bronze artifacts of their time. So other than cost iron didn't initially have any advantages whatsoever as far as late bronze age/early iron age people in Europe were concerned.
@@109Rageone possible reason, or maybe contributing factor is better phrasing, to the native Americans advancing slower on the "tech tree" was their lack of any good domestication candidates. They had llamas and alpacas, which are basically sheep in that they give you animal fibers for cloth, except they are also beasts of burdern, just not nearly as strong as draft horses, oxen, mules, yaks, ext. Without being able to "draft" animals to help with menial labor they would have had to dedicate a lot more human manpower to just staying alive. CGP grey has a great video on this if you haven't seen it already. And to the other point, i find it facinating how our modern perspective tends to simplify technology to a videogame tech tree where each new phase is always an upgrade you should want to switch to ASAP and the reason you haven't yet is either lack of knowledge or some other inability to upgrade. But the reality of the bronze age to ironage transition, atleast in ancient Greece, was that iron was viewed as an inferior metal because its such a pain to smelt and work with for minimal advantage over bronze. (The real magic is steel, which is even harder to make) So the Mycenaean Greeks imported copper from "Asia" and tin from the "tin isles" (Basically the modern day Levant and British Isles respectively) instead of smelting the iron ore available on their own land. The transition only happened because their civilization imploded and the trade stopped, they even lost their writing system but maintained a strong oral tradition and took up iron working. (Its probably just the videogame bias in my brain that makes this so facinating since this isn't how games like civ generally structure their tech trees)
Ohhhh THAT'S where tin goes!! I could never figure out where to find tin. (Which, to be fair, is a problem I have in common with much of the Bronze Age world.) Worth the price of admission just for that but ALSO for the, "so here's what you can access at what point in the tech tree" bits. Which... is about to make Uthir's resource map significantly more sparse. Resource Conflict Time.
Finding tin was actually a problem on earth historically as well, and we actually regularly substituted tin for other elements like arsenic, making arsenic bronze. But I felt going into substitutes and alloy derivations was a little beyond the scope of this video. Resource conflicts are, in my opinion, one of the best ways to make a world feel real! Good luck with Uthir :)
Side note: on Earth, tin and copper deposits were very rarely in close proximity, producing a cultural pressure for relatively large trade networks and empire building for the production of bronze. If your deposits of metals for bronze production are close to each other, your bronze age may look very different with smaller, less violent countries. The biggest shift in the iron age was not that iron was so much better (in fact, the mechanical properties of low-carbon early iron working are extremely similar to good bronze) but the fact that at least _some_ iron ore (be it in the form of iron sands, bog iron, or banded iron deposits) can be found in a lot more locations and isn't an alloy, meaning only a single ore deposit requiring no large trade network is all that is required for the production of tools and weapons. That leads to metal being far more common for tribal societies and it being much easier for geographically smaller groups to be militarily significant in the iron age as well as a shift in the pressures toward empire building. Of course, all in addition to making metal tools and weapons far cheaper for everyone (which helped make it so that military units of heavy infantry could be comprised of anything other than nobility, as outfitting a citizen army with a large amount of armor was prohibitively expensive). The Roman legions we are more familiar with would not have been practical in the bronze age (with a lot of prevalence of light infantry with very large shields that only fight in phalanxes). Lots of room for conflict-driving power shifts even before getting into how the availability of iron tools, armor, and weapons saw a steady rise over time as the production and inheritance of them outpaced both the rates of their destruction and population growth meaning the costs of things like 2nd hand swords and (chain)mail was on a slow but nearly constant downward trend since the widespread adoption of iron smelting.
@@WorldbuildingCorner fun fact: tin, copper and arsenic (along with cobalt, zinc, tungsten, silver and China Clay) are found in huge quantities in Cornwall and west Devon, UK. During the industrial revolution 2/3 of the world's supply of tin came from the region and the mining landscape is a UNESCO world heritage site. There's archaeological evidence of people mining and trading them from the bronze age up until 1997 with bronze age artifacts all the way from Phoenicia found in the region. The importance of mining is huge in Cornish culture, folklore and history. Cornwall's patron saint is also the patron saint of tinners, tin mining even had an independent parliament and court system during the middle ages (the Stannaries) and many mining terms have their origins in the Cornish language. During the industrial revolution Cornish men and women (women known as 'Bal Maidens' would work on the surface breaking up the rock by hand for processing) travelled to anywhere their expertise paid well - it was said that every hole in the ground would have someone called Jack at the bottom of it!
Bog iron has been mentioned by others, however some deposits are created through bacterial action. It is not inconceivable that if bacteria evolved differently, they might deposit other metals instead. Then there is the matter of Rust monster poo - highly sought after for it's dense iron content.
OMG. This information is so hard to find in a digestible form useful to worldbuilders instead of real world prospectors lol. Putting this together is an incredible service to worldbuilders! Thank you!!!
Lead is useful as sling ammunition, at the very least, and can be used by basically anyone since, as you mentioned, it's campfire meltable. It might not be tool-grade, but if all you need is something dense and heavy, it's perfect.
without lead we dont have the printing press for about another 50 years, woodblock presses didnt work well because the wood absorbed too much of the ink, warped and expanded. Lead movable type pieces had none of those disadvantages were easily shapable and relatively cheap to make.
Also we used lead for a ton of things we definitely shouldnt have for hundreds of years. In plumbing, as a sweetener, and a stabilizer in the wine fermentation process. It was also used to make the first regularly used electrical batteries.
@@balfizan lead was also used in cups, figures and in window frames to hold smaller glass panels together.
It was also used with tin to make pewter, which was used (albeit, mostly much later in history) to make relatively cheap plates, mugs, and bowls.
An important use for lead was for sealing roofs in more high-end buildings, as it could easily be shaped into - relatively - thin plates and the use for water pipes - hence the term plumbing. The use in water pipes isn't QUITE as problematic as many would think as long as the water is hard enough and not acidic - it is still not ideal, mind you. Hard water will deposit a layer of carbonates on the inside of the pipe, significantly reducing the amount of lead leaching into the water - though not preventing it entirely.
This channel is absurdly underrated, the video quality and editing are so good! I'm not actually worldbuilding these are just incredibly entertaining to watch.
Coal is actually a miserable fuel source until the discovery of the coking process, which wasn't figured out until some time into the steel age and didn't really take off until close to the beginning of the industrial age. Charcoal is the go-to fuel source for most ancient civilizations, even well into the steel age.
There are certain beaches on the western coasts of Africa where diamonds liberated from long-gone weathered kimberlite tubes are settled on the shores, placers deposits also occur for relatively dense and hard minerals like diamonds but especially for black and red-brown garnets which make the gravel of some rivers a crimson-pinkish hue. The action of water on dense minerals means those with higher specific gravity due to their density naturally deposit more readily than less dense material of similar grain size which means cracks between rocks in rivers is usually where the gold/silver/electrum/copper nuggets and grains will have collected, incidentally the same effect is employed in gold pans to separate denser material. Iron-bearing magnetite will also deposit in the same way and placer deposits of the mineral can form (though it tends to form a poorer quality iron if not sufficiently separated, which means black magnetite sand is a viable source of iron but requires more work to beat the slag out the produced bloom and weld the beads of iron together)
Great video! I would've liked a note that tin-bronze wasn't the only bronze that made a major impact on the development of civilization. Arsenical bronze also had a huge impact as well, since arsenic was typically much more easily found and accessible than tin, often being found near copper deposits and copper ores also typically contained a little bit of arsenic as well (though nowhere near enough for proper arsenical bronze). Arsenical bronze played a huge part of the development of cultures in the Iranian Plateau. Also of note is that coal should not be considered the only potential fuel source for smelting, as charcoal production and use is just as old, if not older. It was also typically much lighter and easier to transport and produce than coal. Civilizations near a large amount of forestland should be able to substitute that for coal deposits to determine their potential for development.
2:50 it gets even better. The only reason we have significant deposits of Hemotite is because of the great oxification of the ocean by the first photosythetsis and respiratory cells. Iron uses to float in solution with normal H2O until cells began creating and consuming Oxygen gas, and free radical Oxygen. The latter of which helped leech the iron from the water to create rust. Over time great sheets of iron would fall like snow to the seabed wherein it would get transfered into the cycles of Ore Genesis.
Great video! Small addition from a european geoscientist (sedimentology): coal also exists with an age of 15-40 M years as seen in Germany and Poland. Okay, it is bad brown coal, but it powers Poland. Even oil can be kinda young: caspian oil in Azerbijan is younger than 50 M years! But these are special conditions including mud volcanoes. Great to see the contents of my university studies in fantasy settings😊
Thanks for adding this from another (former) American geoscientist (paleobotany)! Yeah, he gave 250 million years, which coincides with the Permian extinction, and I'm not sure why. Some of the most famous high-grade coals are from the Carboniferous period which predates that, but as you said, many of the economically significant coals mined today are much, much younger. Coal grade is determined by the heat and pressure it underwent after the peat was originally deposited. Some very young coals are actually decent grade because they were buried deep by other sediments quickly.
I was kind of hoping you would get into the metals most likely to correspond to certain fantasy/old world metal names. Platinum being true silver Mercury being quick silver The possibility that Aluminium, Titanium, or one of their alloys could be mythril The possibility that Tungsten could be adamantium in a fantasy setting seeing as how Tungsten like adamantium is extremely difficult to modify once forged.
Amazing video! Lets also not forget the Assyrian 'mountain copper' that, despite the creation process not being entirely understood at the time, was an extremely important compound in the Greek and Roman worlds: Brass.
Not to mention how brass could be produced by melting Copper and Sphalerite (or other Zinc-bearing ores) together in the same crucible.
Hi, I'm a mining engineer and tbh I'm commenting before starting the video but I like that someone came up with this video cuz even before starting my carrer I felt like metals and other minerals in fiction don't have the proper depth they require, they have so much potential, specially for world building as they are an important part of any society that uses them
Oh god this is a lot of information I hadn't even begun considering to add. This series is amazing and has helped me a lot. Thank you!!!
They can be found laying around. You can find river bacteria from oxidation that will hold iron, for example, and by boiling the water that contain them, you can in a day of gathering and smelting have enough to make a whole blade.
This one is a difficult topic for me, but one that's very important in designing early civilizations. Thanks for laying it out in a concise way!
You are welcome, glad you found it helpful!
Iron is abundant in fluvial swamps as bog iron. A lot of iron age iron came from those rather than mines.
Thanks so much for your work. Writers that have no background related with all that stuff need these kind of videos.
Good rundown. Given that most fantasy worlds are somewhat grounded in the medieval era, it felt like the video should have covered metallurgy through that period, instead of stopping in ancient times. Specifically, it would have been good to cover tropes of steel and platinum in fantasy. Perhaps a follow up video?
Native platinum is normally contaminated with e.g. iridium, which makes it hard and brittle. Combined with its melting point of 1770°C it would be nearly impossible to work with and not that useful due to its brittleness. If you managed to purify it, then it becomes very soft which again makes it useless for tools. Thus, platinum might be used for jewelry (like gold, it does not tarnish) but not much else in a medieval society (unless you assign it mythical properties of course). Making steel from iron does not take that much extra technology, just a few lucky discoveries and a lot of work. Thus you have a lot of margin as a world builder with the quality and availability of steel in your societies. High quality steel would however always be very expensive. Not only is it labor intensive to make with pre-industrialized technology, it is also difficult to control the amount of impurities and as a result the quality will differ widely. The best pieces would be very valuable. Actually, the last point is very interesting: Medieval metallurgy can create alloys like bronze that contain large amounts of all constituents, but it has little control over trace alloy elements. As even fractions of a percent of certain impurities can have large effects, I think there is historical justification for "wonder weapons" that happen to have good properties by accident, especially ones made out of steel.
One thing to consider is that the iron age didn't happen because iron is better than bronze, it happened because the bronze age civilization collapsed and took down the trade networks importing tin from litterally off the map. (The British Isles are likely what the greeks refered to as the tin isles which were the states primary source of tin for the Mediterranean civilizations) Copper can be melted with a hot fire, mix in tin amd you get bronze which can be poured into a mould. Although the primary means of working with copper is to work it cold and once it gets stiff you anneal it with lower temperature heating to "reset" it. Iron is much more plentiful but such a pain to work with bronze age societies considered it inferior. It take a lot more heat to melt, but melting it makes brittle high carbon cast iron, so instead you half melt it in a bloomery and then beat the impurities out of it. Upgrading iron to steel requires very precise control of heat and purity which was beyond most preindustrial societies abilities. (Especially to mass produce) If you want a modern metal like aluminum, you need a way to provide some truly insane amounts of energy to the process, far more than regular fire can achieve. It took us getting electricity to even begin mass production of aluminum, and even today electricity makes up around 30% of the price of aluminum. However, as the world builder you can provide access to magic strong enough to refine aluminum.
Honestly finding the comments to be just as insightful as the video is a nice change on youtube. It's fun to theorycraft fantasy metals into societal evolution as well, would love to see something on that perhaps.
I clicked on this purely out of curiosity to see what you were doing. 6 minutes in and I'm going to be saving your Step-by-step Worldbuilding as *_MANDATORY_* watching because I'm in the process of worldbuilding right now for a series that I'm in the planning process of. The fact you're going so deep into *how* things are formed is *_exactly what I've been looking for_* as reference material since I've been doing things mostly from a "feel" perspective. Of course, it being a fantasy setting, things will be fudged because yes I want my fantasy to be awesome and epic lololol This will likely end up being material I'll reference quite a bit when I come to specific things that I need to explain about my world to myself, even if no one will ever read the background stuff (and I don't really plan on having everyone understand some of the underpinnings).
Having only watched the intro at this point. I never would have put much thought into this, but its a super cool thing to think about and play with. Like, how far into a game would players go, “hang on, why is there no metal here?”
Finally, this video came and i can't express how happy i am about it, you surely will get more followers Matthew. Your videos are pretty useful and i am glad this channel exist Cheers!
Thank you for the lovely feedback! I am glad you are enjoying the content and finding it useful! Stay tuned for more :)
Of note, several other metals were accessible pre-industrialization, but found uses outside of metallurgy itself, or weren't able to be purified. Antimony was discovered by the middle ages on Earth, and was purified, but it is not of much use in the metallurgy of the time, instead being used "medicinally" (it is toxic) and as a dye. Zinc WAS useful in metallurgy, and was used to make brass about a millennium before year 0, but it wasn't discovered as an element until much later. Nickel is similar in that it was used without being understood very early on. Cobalt was used as a dye, Arsenic was mostly noteworthy for its toxicity, Mercury is liquid at room temperature, and Bismuth was known, but not used or really understood as far as I can tell as a layman.
If the element's symbol doesn't match up to its English name, the symbol usually comes from the Latin name, which means it was known to the Romans.
Love this. This is real world building, starting with basics. Geology. Very well researched sir, good work.
Started building my own world of Exodus recently and this video has helped me figure out how to deal with ore deposits near and around volcanos.
Yooo, your channel is exactly what I've been looking for
Man, great high quality on such a small channel, your content is good.
Thanks for the University level course on Geology. Players should appreciate the level of detail we world building GMs go to for their entertainment.
You don't need the smelting temperature to work the metals. Otherwise, blacksmiths wouldn't exist. You just need to heat it to soften it and a forge and bellows is enough for that. Iron can still be found natively thanks to meteorites. One theory on the myth of Excalibur was it was made from iron found in this way during the bronze age. A metal that fell from the sky.
Such an amazing video! Unbelievably helpful knowledge!
Drawing on real life mythology in my setting I focus on the 7 metals known to the ancients and were associated with the 7 main gods, 7 visible celestial objects (aka the 7 heavens being the 5 visible planets + sun & moon), 7 primary colors, 7 days of the week, 7 sins, etc.
Seven chipmonks twirling on a branch, eating lots of sunflowers on my Uncle's ranch!
Where I live, very large deposits of lead and zinc together are literally at ground level all over the place.
This series is just what I needed! Thanks a trillion
Note: In a fantasy world setting, you can have Golems that drop ore they are made from, with the power of an ore scaling with how hecken hard it is to kill that dang metal clunk
I appreciate that you added information about coal deposits. The main world I'm working on now doesn't have any metal deposits, or any real access to metals outside biological use. The bronze age will either be replaced by the magic age or the plastic age, whichever comes first. As such, the locations of accessible fossil fuels is vitally important for civilizations.
I think it's kinda interesting that brass is omitted from this list. By the time you get to the iron age, you'll probably discover brass, which is very useful as an accenting metal and for crafts in the home.
Ancient metallurgy wasn't advanced enough to differentiate between all of the different "Golden colored copper alloys", and Zinc wasn't even identified as an element until surprisingly late, on account that it will vaporize and burn away at high temperatures. It's weird to think about since Brass is so common now, but it wasn't really a "thing" for a very long time.
@@HansLemurson I hate to break it to you, the Romans were making Brass. It was a very popular decorative addition to armor.
@@BlackBanditXX Like actual copper/zinc alloy?
@@BlackBanditXX I have to apologize to you, I arrogantly assumed too much knowledge on my part. I've done more reading about Roman Brass, and even just saw a "How to make Everything" video about ancient techniques for Brass making. Turns out you don't have to know what "Zinc" is in order to make Brass!
I was expecting fantasy metal to be included. Things like mithril and adamantite.
If the conditions are right, you can skip to the iron age. You just need an area with strong and constant winds, as well as the requisite ores. One such location on earth is actually in Africa. I imagine that woots steel was done in a similar environment.
That's interesting. If aluminium is easy to access, but hard to purify by pre-industrial means, could it be purified by mystical/alchemical means. In that case it would make an excellent candidate for mithral.
The problem with Aluminum is it's too soft and light to make good weapons. Maybe it could be used in armor, though? If it's impossible to extract without magic, it would be a noble metal, used as a sign of immense wealth (Napoleon III ate off of Aluminum because it cost more than gold) on earth prior to electrical refining.
@@tyrannosaurusimperator Actually some zinc alloys with aluminium are stronger than many mild steels. Though I agree an aluminium sword probably wouldn't be that impressive. Zinc Aluminium alloy ring or chain mail though, that would be a game changer.
In my setting, pure metals conduct mana/magical energy poorly while metal oxides are extremely conductive, to the point that blood is how creatures channel magic energy. It means weapons designed to conduct mana have an oxide coating/paint but can’t channel mana as well as a rusted sword or a living being. Weapons with excessive metal oxides are bad in actual combat, so it’s not done. There’s a mace designed with a complex pore structure similar to activated carbon that has dried blood from all kinds of creatures dried up in its interior, allowing the wielder to channel all those different kinds of magic
@@justinokraski3796 According to those rules aluminum would be the king of metals as every aluminum object has a hard, non-porous layer of aluminum oxide. Would also place gems such as ruby and sapphire as highly magically active due to being composed almost entirely of aluminum oxide.
Incredible channel I will watch all the videos
This is the first video of yours I've watched so I don't know if you're intentionally doing a more realistic guide for world building or if you're just giving a summary of how it worked in our world as a basis. But it's worth mentioning that since it is a fantasy world there is also a possibility that the development could look different in some ways. For example cultures who develop powerful fire magic early on might not need to become an industrial society before they started working with metals with high smelting temperatures. Or if there are other metals that would be important in your world rather than the ones we had, or sentient creatures who live underground and would encounter the metals found further down first they maybe wouldn't have a bronze age as their first massive leap. This is a really good video though and I learned a lot, just wanted to point that out for people!
This was GREAT, and will be a handy reference, but what I was initially expecting was a look at fantastic metals (mithril, orichalcum, adamatine, etc.) and how they would line up to real world analog metals, where they then might be found, and how they would impact metalurgical development. That would be a lot more speculative, but I'd still be very interested.
oh for the fell gods, you have the best intro, the best!
This is a great resource to help with realistic world building. Although, I will point out, that the working temperatures of metals are significantly lower than their melting temperatures. Casting did require the metal to be melted and poured into a mold, but metal working via a method called consolidation (repeated heating, hammering, and folding metal) also purifies metal by forcing the less dense impurities out of the metal. Additionally earthen kilns are easy to set up use. This wouldn't require a permanent settlement. Earthen kilns are temporary and often single use. Coal also burns at a lower temperature than charcoal. Coal only started to be used after mass deforestation left most regions inhabited by people completely depleted of trees to make fuel.
Just found your channel today. Very interesting. It may be that charcoal was a more important source of fuel rathar than coal in early history. From what I have read on looking up bronze production via the internet, smelting kilns in places like Cyprus were fueled by managed forests, which were sustainably "farmed" for wood suitable for turning into charcoal, which could also be imported. Off to the next episode now .....
That would be correct. It wasn't until well after Marco Polo's journeys ( (about the 1270-1300) that coal became commonly used in Europe (think mid 13 hundreds for early it to start becoming somewhat common place). In fact, people criticized/belittled him upon his return to Europe for claiming that the Chinese used "black rocks" in their forges/smelters. Edits: KZhead glitches are so annoying.
Where was this video a week ago! Would have saved me so much time of googling and learning geography. Still. Great video!
Awesome video! Very well explained. So...For my own worldbuilding, the technology amongst the fantasy races is...uneven. Let's say they don't use metal tools even at a late point of their history because of their sensitivity to magnetism. However, technologically, they discover methane heating and make child-carrying kites but keep on using and crafting tools made out of stone when everyone else around them use iron. Dwarves and drows would be particularly known to value tin cooking implements due to mostly using hot-springs for their cooking. Easy to craft, easy to fix and easy to carry. Also, metal handles rapid temperature shifts better than ceramic. Also, they might not necessarily have access to iron due to conflicts with other races...So yeah... Also, my world has mer people and cat people I forgot to mention previously. Neither of them use metal, but merpeople would occasionally mine it to get rid of dangerous "pests" or to trade with humans in exchange for these humans to not destroy their environment. Cat people would be clueless about metallurgy all together, living mostly through hunting and agriculture. Humans in this world would be the first to discover and use bronze, while the rest develop all kinds of bizarre inventions, and would drive off many of the other "magical" races.
That's very interesting! Copper, silver, gold, and tin are actually non-magnetic, if you wanted to use them within your races that are sensitive to magnetism. They could even utilise bronze, providing it was mixed appropriately. Of course mining those metals would also come with the risk of being exposed to magnetic metals like nickel, but perhaps they could trade for them after another culture refines them? Iron of course is extremely magnetic, actually the most magnetic metal to my knowledge, so no iron age for those sensitive races.
@@WorldbuildingCorner Yes, my elves are sensitive to magnetism, so no iron age for them, but they use mostly copper, tin and occasionally gold or bronze, but they still use stone for tools that need to be extremely sharp and stiff. Cat people also don't like magnetism near the head at all. No iron age for the elves, but that doesn't mean they won't have technological advancements in other areas prior to humans. Long-term exposure to excessive amounts of magnetism can be dangerous to them, as they rely on this sense to detect dangerous entities, interpret emotions of others and predators. However, just as too much light can render a person blind, or too much loud sounds would cause a person to go deaf, an excessive amount of magnetism would mean they would loose this sense, which would be dangerous in a world filled with vengeful ghosts, lynxes, witch-hunts and mist-monsters.
@@Lilas.Duveteux Very cool! I love how you've worked in that magnetism sensitivity as another sense. Very flavoursome.
@@WorldbuildingCorner Your videos are super helpful!
I am furiously taking notes right now!! I need to make multiple layers of my world maps.
It definitely helps having multiple layers! I save a 'base layer' and then create other ones from there, like metals, foods, climates, etc.
@@WorldbuildingCorner Brilliant!
@@WorldbuildingCorner What application do you use for your maps?
Some of your fantasy tectonic plates make sense, but there are many that don't correspond with the landform features on your map, your map with the tectonic boundaries would suggest many rift valleys. The river systems on your map would not work with rifting plates. The volcanic island arc formations you suggest would definitely work on an Earth like world.
Note you don't need coal deposits for smelting once you have kilns you have the ability to make charcoal in fact charcoal is easier to make then any of the metal working and will burn hot enough to do the job.
To add, most mined coal types are unsuitable for burning without being coaked first. Charcoal is much easier as a starting fuel and coal is for later eras.
Just don't forget the deforestation that will result from a high charcoal demand!
Can make charcoal out of nothing but fire, mud, and wood. Not a permanent kiln but serviceable.
@@HansLemurson proper forestry technics like coppicing will not deforest the land.
A little late to the party, but copper still has a massive advantage over stone. It can be fixed or remelted. If a complex stone tool broke, you would need to recarve the stone tool, and work painstakingly into it again. Copper could just be fixed using a hammer, or if necessary, re-smelting it, which was complicated, but would be compensated by its longer durability.
Finally a video that explains these matters clearly and concisely, even though I had to follow along carefully! Thank you! I have a question. My world (Aerlia) is very connected to copper and has large amounts of it. It even falls from the sky! How would this detail change the cultures? Would the Bronze Age come first, would it be easier to create bronze?
Point of clarity as an enthusiast who studies archaeology about pre-industrial metalworking: coal as in anthracite and similar carbon deposits in our world were not generally used for smelting or metal working until the early industrial revolution. For thousands of years the the dominant fuel source was charcoal. Charcoal is wood that has been heated in a low to no-oxygen environment so it smolders and drives off everything in the wood that is not carbon. One reason so much of Europe is deforested compared to hundreds or thousands of years ago is the constant need for charcoal (along with farmland and using the wood as timber). So, forests would be an important natural resource for a nation to control in a pre-industrial world. Heck, it's still important in our industrial world, so much so that many of our forests in the USA are strictly managed
Amazing 👍
While my world is literally formed from the raw essence of Primal elemental magics, I will definitely be incorporating some of this into the setting. Thanks for the video!
Awesome!
Thank you! Glad you are continuing to find the content awesome :)
Also Bronze is only one copper alloy, there are several other metals that can be used. Zinc, Arsenic and others.
I think it should be mentioned that if you have Roman Empire like empire in your fantasy world, displaying the following could be exceptional for both world building, but also as a display of the empires reach. In Spain their was a mountain, but the Romans managed to remove most of it, and part of the entire range as well. Even way back then we were capable of terraforming the world to our will, and with magic, depending on the type and rules, it could be easier to do. Extensive mining operations have existed for thousands of years, granted the Romans were mining gold, I don't recall them mining for Iron, or Copper in the region.
Consider the huge copper mines of Rio Tinto in SW Spain. Worked extensively by the Romans
Gold and silver also were found in native metal deposits. The Arabian deposit that was entirely mined out before the first written language was developed had large nuggets that could be dug up by hand (literally). Since a few native copper and one native gold surface deposits were the only known source of metal, one of the earliest written records was of a note that gold was valued at three times the value of copper. The earliest silver came from a native deposit. Antimony was also used by the ancients, but they never reduced stibnite to metallic form. They did add it to lead as a hardener (like tin added to copper). At least some portion of the antimony would mix with the lead. The rest would come out as dross.
great video
The biggest thing I took away from this video is that mining technology is way more complex and difficult than I had thought
14:39 - None of the cultures of the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic shaped metals - they are referred to as the Stone Age for a reason. 17:35 Coins were not introduced in the Copper Age, but much later.
If your world had a recent ice age, you can also look into glacial erosion. I'm not entirely sure if it is relevant to ore deposits but it does affect rocks and sediment, mostly in the subarctic climates that used to be covered by glaciers. It could also add variation to biomes and cultures, since it affects the soil and landscape.
You have the most unique pronunciation of Placer I have ever heard.
You answered so many questions I've had floating around in my head since RuneScape, thanks! I also feel more prepared to help advance a culture if I ever find myself sent back in time before the copper/bronze age (I'd prioritize coal, copper, and tin, right? so we can get to bronze quickly? I feel like just knowing that would be a big leap, idk)
You shoved a series of images of how the world looked millions of years ago. Where did you get those? I don't remember seing them in earlier videos. Great content by the way :)
I had the maps made originally for the video on Fantasy Maps, but ended up not using them for that video. In short, I created the 'modern' map for Locus first, and then worked backwards based on the direction tectonic plates were moving. I also took inspiration from earth at those points in history, and we can see that the further back in time we go, the more 'Pangea-like' earth was, and the less continental coverage there was. Locus has even more water than earth, so I kept the trend.
Coal is at best a tertiary fuel source. Wood , dried dung being a primary source. ( unsuited for smelting ). The fuel source for smelting is charcoal.. Smelting was likely a happenstance discovered by attemps to decorate pottery during firing.
Am I the only one who thought this would be talking about actual fantasy metals, rather than a ranking of how accessible real world metals would be in a fantasy world?
19:26 You have this backwards, it's harder to smelt iron than to work it. I basic wood fire is hot enough to work iron, although not very effectively. You need to actually melt the iron ore to smelt it but can be work it at lower temperatures.
I think you might have wanted to say also that coal can be easily substituted by charcoal And I think the latter was way more common
also... I can't believe I'm learning all of these in a novel making tutorial, instead of a science video lmao xd . love your videos though
copper can be smelted with burning wood with a simple bellows as it raises the fire temp up to right around its melt point. and iron oxide melts at a low point due to its a reduction reaction agen with charcoal the oxgen breaks off making fire hoter. but youd have wrought iron not steel.
Please do one of these for gemstones. I am currently trying to figure out where to set up a village where animals can be consistently "Awakened" (spell) and farm plenty of Agate material components as to be self-sufficient.
Would have been nice to at least touch on metamorphic deposits and other common gems of note. But definitely a great start to new builders and a good glossary of points to check for oldhands too
I’m currently working on a civilization that was forced to develop and adapt within reliable access to metal and metallurgy. As a result they were heavily reliant on wood, animal products, glass and ceramics for construction, tools, weapons and armor.
Do you recommend worldbuilding books that could elaborate further on this process?
17:30 - 5000 BCE for copper smelting, 700 BCE for the first coin, the "Lydian Lion", and Chinese Knife money is like 600 BCE ... so historically there is a gigantic gap for some reason and no development of metal currency together with copper, silver and gold smelting .... :X
Nice. This might even be good in geology class.
A good basic overview, but there's a few comments I'd like to make: Afaik, coal played no big role in early metallurgy as not only are easily minable deposits somewhat rare, but coal releases large quantities of sulfur and sut when burned. Those would contaminate the metall and make it useless. Coal was afaik not much - if at all - used for refining and working metalls until the industrial revolution when coal could be refined into coke. Prior to this charcoal would be used for metallwork. Thus the availability of wood (forrests) would imo be more important than coal deposits. Iron con be refined without melting it. That's what a bloomery does. The product then must be further refined manualy. A highly labour intenisve process. A fire hot enough to melt copper should be suffcient to refine and forge iron. It was probably the additional labour requirements that initialy turned people away from using it. An important factor that wasn't mentioned is transportation. Deposits either close to the coast or near a navigable river would be far easier to exploit due to easier transportation. Overland transport was a pain in the butt before the advent of the railway.
Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science. Use geomancy to purify metals easily as in such spells/incantations, you can indicate what part of the compound you wish to extract. Alternatively, use the spell to split the compounds down into their component parts thus getting pure iron or other such metals more easily. In addition, these spells can also be used in such a way as to make metals 100% pure and maintain metals without worrying about oxidation. Though this is working under the assumption of a fantasy world with magic.
I am grinning right now because the earliest use of "magic" in your world of Locus may have been to smelt Aluminum and Iron, allowing for the production of duralumin concurrently with bronze.
10:14 Imagine being some B.C. Miner, finding a vein of uranium, and suddenly everyone you see go near it dies, along with you. No wonder some places were thought to be cursed. I'd think it was a curse too if some invisible death just started killing everyone who entered "the cursed mines"
It is a story format that you carry as a family line long rests instead being inheriting the family relics & building a new relic every age for every PC. This representing the new level tourparh leveling, Than sell it to homeschool teachers
Tin is an interesting metal, since as a metal, it's condusive, it has a rather low toxicity once purified and is rather easily to mend because of it's low temperture range, and unlike ceramics, can withstand extremes of cold and heat much better. For continental climates, tin cauldrons tend to be in extremely high demand the second a culture is aware of them or discovers them. For example, during the fur trades, the tin cauldron was one of the highest products exchanged for fur, since several Cree and Algonquin Nations found it extremely useful for processing food. Because it's oxydisation is less toxic, it can be used to line copper cooking vessels. So, while not the best metal for tools and weapons, tin is massively useful in transportation. Tin is malleable, resistant to water oxydisation. It doesn't resist well to extrem cold, and iron is much better for it, but, still better than ceramic. It can also be used for lanterns, they won't be as solid as iron ones, but still fairly good. Lanterns, cauldrons, pots and buttons are all very useful tools that are made out of tin. Continental climates tend to highly encourage the comsumption of infusions, as it allows to make use of the abundant snow during the winter, and the long winters make plant infusions necessary as a way to treat and prevent scurvy. Through trade or through native plants species, infusions tend to be very popular in those climates. Russia is one of the world's largest tea consummers for example, this only counts for black tea, and not the various infusions russians consume with gusto. But tea and infusions are not limited to the cold continental interiors, nor the wet coasts of East Asian. King Louis XIVth was a great enjoyer of herbal teas, for health reasons and personnal enjoyment. A lot of websites claim they were invented in Antiquity, but, many cultures of still stone age technologies consummed it, so I have trouble believing it had to wait agriculture. Now, for classic fantasy, I can imagine dwarves being a huge fan of tin, since the mountenous environment isn't great for clay, and it would allow them to mixt up their mountain snow and source water with various herbs, since that mountain snow is too pure of a water to be safely consummed on a long-term basis, and can lead to quite the nasty malformations, often caused by a lack of iodes and other salts, and are both linked with neurological and osterological diseases. They might even have a material culture of pottery used to store these dried herbs for infusions in various forms representing cheerful infants or well-formed skeletons as a way to designate the type of things to be stored in the pot. Tin having a low melting temperture would be ideal for these intricate designs, and for transporting an object that would be much needed. Occasional oxydisation of this mineral wouldn't be that much of a bad thing as long as it remains low, as again, pure water isn't good. Tin, because of it's usefulness for trade, as well as gold and copper, would probably be highly useful for trade, in particular for sea salt, kelp and rice.
If it's not hydrogen it's a metal - Astronomers. Also Astronomers, everything is just proto iron waiting to happen.
If you're writing a fantasy story placed on a different planet, you don't necessarily need to assume that the atmosphere even has oxygen. If it does, it will attack pretty much every element, just like on Earth. However, in an oxygen void atmosphere all sorts of metals could be easily available. Al, Mg and Ca would be easily available. If the planet is also void of water, you should be able to use K, Li and Na to build stuff.
Before the video gets underway, I'm calling: Gold (Au), Silver (Ag), Copper (Cu), Lead (Pb), Tin (Sn), Iron (Fe) and Antimony (Sb) - all heavily used historically and the source of longstanding alloys (such as bronze from copper and tin and pewter from tin, antimony, copper and lead)
I would like mention that platinum due to its high melting point was rarely used in any large anout and some times not at all till you started getting more modern smelting tricks like in the I belive 1700's and on but I may be mistaken this isn't my best feild. love everything else other wise.