How was Iron discovered in ancient Greece?

[Promethean Fire]

Het guys, im nor sure about this but something came to me when i was reading about the Dorian movement in Greetce and the reports of an indestructable weapon they brought with them whcih they refered to as there swords obviously being made of iron.

I searched and its recorded that China is the pioneers of cast iron in 500 B.C and europe later dicovered it in 1760's in england.

Did the Dorians use cast Iron or another form it? and whatever form it was how did they discover it and what boiling methods did they use to bring it to its pure form??
t
Im interested because melting it to form takes more than 1500 Cel which would have been impossible to produce in those days...so i ask, how on earth did they do it?

Heres a paper thats as confused as me on the subject.

http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/ama...greece_an.html

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by Promethean Fire

Het guys, im nor sure about this but something came to me when i was reading about the Dorian movement in Greetce and the reports of an indestructable weapon they brought with them whcih they refered to as there swords obviously being made of iron.

I searched and its recorded that China is the pioneers of cast iron in 500 B.C and europe later dicovered it in 1760's in england.

Did the Dorians use cast Iron or another form it? and whatever form it was how did they discover it and what boiling methods did they use to bring it to its pure form??
t
Im interested because melting it to form takes more than 1500 Cel which would have been impossible to produce in those days...so i ask, how on earth did they do it?

Heres a paper thats as confused as me on the subject.

http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/ama...greece_an.html

I know that it was the Phrygians (Lausitz culture) that brought Iron in the Balkans or if you like inaugurated the EARLY IRON AGE in the Balkans.
The Dorians , as all the NW Greeks that were in close contact with them learn how to use iron and use it during their descend in Peloponnesus

[Orphic_Hymn]

A. M. Snodgrass in his "Iron Age Greece and Central Europe" states:

The typological evidence all points towards Cyprus and the East, and away from Central Europe, as the source of the first Greek iron weapons, by influence if not by direct export. The earliest known iron sword from the mainland is a sub-form of Naue's Type II, in which the pommel-spur is elongated and the pommel-ears suppressed. This variety has bronze predecessors and contemporaries in the Near East, where it also ap- pears in iron. Four other early Greek iron swords, from Kavousi (see n.7), Kerameikos (n.8, no.i), Ialysos and Kofina (n.9), are of a different type, in which the blade tapers from the shoulder to the tip
This form has a bronze forerunner in Cyprus and remained a common Iron Age type on that island. It is utterly untypical of Central Europe. The long, narrow sword of Agora Grave XXVII is one of several Greek examples of similar shape, all of which were found bent over or curled; one of these belongs defi- nitely in the Ioth century. The rounded pommel of the Agora sword is unusual, but has a parallel in a very early Cypriote iron sword.

and S. C. Bakhuizen "Greek Steel" :

Smelted iron has been known since the third millennium B.C. (Coghlan 1956: 61 sqq.). The Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations used iron for amulets and jewellery (rings for instance) (Iakovidhis I970: 288-96). Towards the end of the Mycenaean period and in the beginning of the Dark Ages the Greeks began to use iron for weapons: knives, daggers and swords (Snodgrass 197I: 217 sqq.). In the Near East iron became widespread by I200 B.C. The iron dagger blade from the tomb of Tutankhamen (c. I350 B.C.) and the iron blade of the battle-axe from Ras Shamra (c. 1300 B.C.) are top pieces of the iron metallurgy of this age (Singer 1954:619). The techniques of hot-forging (hammering) and carburization had been mastered now (see e.g. Coghlan 1956: I34-5I). Iron objects with hard and sharp cutting edges or points could be made in this way. Around the middle of the eleventh century the Greeks themselves may have begun making iron swords, knives, daggers and pins, from local ores (Snodgrass 197I: 221 sqq.). For the time being iron did not yet surpass bronze in all respects. The hardness of the entire objects was often less than that of bronze objects, and the toughness of later steel objects was unknown as yet.

[Andrew]

So Orphic Hymn all this means that iron metallurgy technincs came from the east or was an independent local development on the greek soil ?? What I mean is it imported by someone from the east or it was knowlegde that was acquired independently and with phase retardation in respect of the East ??

[Andrew]

Yes you are wright Orphic Hymn ..we find it first in Asia !!

A Brief History of Iron and Steel Production

by

Professor Joseph S. Spoerl

Saint Anselm College

The production of iron by humans began probably sometime after 2000 BCE in south-west or south-central Asia, perhaps in the Caucasus region. Thus began the Iron Age, when iron replaced bronze in implements and weapons. This shift occurred because iron, when alloyed with a bit of carbon, is harder, more durable, and holds a sharper edge than bronze. For over three thousand years, until replaced by steel after CE 1870, iron formed the material basis of human civilization in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

for more info in iron metallurgy ...http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbana...egie-steel.htm

[Orphic_Hymn]

Originally Posted by Andrew

So Orphic Hymn all this means that iron metallurgy technincs came from the east or was an independent local development on the greek soil ?? What I mean is it imported by someone from the east or it was knowlegde that was acquired independently and with phase retardation in respect of the East ??

Not really sure about iron since accounts seem to contradict eachother.. take for example what we posted, my source dates it to the 3rd mil. BC while yours suggests after 2000BC.

But if we were to move a bit further back in time (5000BC) .. we'd find that Colin Renfrew, Marija Gimbutas and Ernestine S. Elster in their "Excavations at Sitagroi: A Prehistoric Village in Northeast Greece" suggest autonomy in metallurgic innovations. They actually state that their finds indicate that metallurgy was so far developed that its impossible for it to have been any form of import since the technology was far superior to anything known to have been produced in Anatolia or the M.East prior to the 2nd mil BC. (but then this isn't iron)

[Andrew]

So what about the myth that the Dorians had it first among the Greeks and used it to invade Peloponnese ???

[Orphic_Hymn]

I've read of finds that pre-date the alleged Dorian invasion.. but then as you'll see here, the whole invasion theory has a huge hole in it, since the major destructions take place prior to their alleged invasion.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by Orphic_Hymn

I've read of finds that pre-date the alleged Dorian invasion.. but then as you'll see here, the whole invasion theory has a huge hole in it, since the major destructions take place prior to their alleged invasion.

WOW !!!!!

The only things for sure are :
1) The Dorians came after in Peloponnesus
2) The Ionians were driven away from Peloponnesus and concentrated in Attica
3) And YES .. if there was a Dorian invasion that happened before 1200 BC (LHIIIB) certainly.

2 Questions ....
a) When do you date TODAY the Trojan war (1182 BC or 1250 BC) ??
b) The invasion of Trojan allies (Thracians,Mysians..) and Colonists (Paeonians, Teucrians ...) is demonstrated by archaeology and if yes when dated ??

[Andrew]

I'm asking you that because we know that the so-called "invasion" if it happened caused an population increment in the Ionian islands as archaeology has dimonstrated and I found it in Odyssey , at the start of the Rapsody 6 , about the Story of the Phaecians:

So here Ulysses slept, overcome by sleep and toil; but Minerva went off to the country and city of the Phaecians- a people who used to live in the fair town of Hypereia, near the lawless Cyclopes. Now the Cyclopes were stronger than they and plundered them, so their king Nausithous moved them thence and settled them in Scheria, far from all other people. He surrounded the city with a wall, built houses and temples, and divided the lands among his people; but he was dead and gone to the house of Hades, and King Alcinous, whose counsels were inspired of heaven, was now reigning. To his house, then, did Minerva hie in furtherance of the return of Ulysses.

And the poet of the Odyssey refers us that the dorian colonization of Crete was already made before "Odysseusis return to home" , Rapsody (XIX,177) :

There is a fair and fruitful island in mid-ocean called Crete; it is thickly peopled and there are nine cities in it: the people speak many different languages which overlap one another, for there are Achaeans, brave Eteocretans, Dorians of three-fold race, and noble Pelasgi.

The only location that I found corresponding to Hypereia is in Iliad in Rapsody II :

The men, moreover, of Ormenius, and by the fountain of Hypereia, with those that held Asterius, and the white crests of Titanus, these were led by Eurypylus, the son of Euaemon, and with them there came forty ships.

And back to the Faeaks in Rapsody we have the geneology of Arete and Alcinous:

"This is the house, father stranger, which you would have me show you. You will find a number of great people sitting at table, but do not be afraid; go straight in, for the bolder a man is the more likely he is to carry his point, even though he is a stranger. First find the queen. Her name is Arete, and she comes of the same family as her husband Alcinous. They both descend originally from Neptune, who was father to Nausithous by Periboea, a woman of great beauty. Periboea was the youngest daughter of Eurymedon, who at one time reigned over the giants, but he ruined his ill-fated people and lost his own life to boot

Conclusions:
1) The Pheacians went to Corcyra (Scheria) during/after the the Dorian invasion.
2) They used to live in Hypereia as Titans (giants) , which is in Ormenius (mount Pelium, Magnesia) as Iliad says and were driven away by the rough but stronger Cyclopes (Dorians, Thessalians , NW Greeks ???).
3) The ancestor of Arete and Alcinous was Eurymedon king of the giants(Titans) , meanwhile in Ormenius we have Eyaemon dwelling Titanus.
4) A population that seeks salvation in the islands is hunted by terrestrial invasors and not by "sSea People" , because the sea people can rich you easier in the islands.

5) Also the name of the invaders as "Cyclopes" is interesting since in early greek mythology the Cyclopes were helpers of Hephaestus , great metallurgists that have created the weapons of the gods for the Titanomachy. So It could be an other element about the importation of the Iron Working.

6) The name Phaeacians on the other hand means "brown ,darked skin" , which orientates us to a "Mediterranean" type population like Pelasgeans or Tyrrhenians . For the last we know that they were originaly in the Aegean (and mount Pelium is on the Aegean coast) area and were driven away around LHIII-EIA in Toscan Italy. Maybe Corcyra was their middle station.

So that addresses me to an Invasion of the North Western rough Greeks , that inhabit Epeirus and Western Macedonia maybe importers of the Iron Working , versus the Mycenaean centers...What do you think ???