Gold is found in nature. Most metals are not. They're generally in the form of an ore. It's quite a step from seeing blobs of metal melted from a rock in a campfire to realising that those blobs of metal can make a knife, ring or pot and doing it. How do you think humans made the step? Do you think the first metal object produced by smelting an ornament, weapon, cooking ware, tool or something else? Do you have evidence for your conjecture? Do you think there is some other way that humans saw metal coming from ore other than by fire?

Purely by accident during the earlier times. Afterwards, it was due to curiosity, then by planning & then through the realization of improving daily chores & then the realization of gain from each new development. Pretty much the same principle as today's technology, although nowadays usefulness is being displaced by the far more profitable phenomenon of consumerism. The polluting side effects of producing superfluous commodities are overruled by profit. So, there goes our argument about reducing Greenhouse gases.

It takes more than accident to realise one can produce a knife, pot or tool from a blob of metal if it hasn't been done before. I am pretty sure I would not have thought of it. Can you imagine the thought processes of the person who did think of it?

Hey David, I can imagine this accident thing – bit of rock with some sort of ore running through it in a fire overnight and in the ashes come morning the run of some metal was found in solid form so Rachel (the cavewoman) went looking for that rock and messed with it along with more fire so she could peel the spuds the next night with her newly invented “erk”.

Infact I know this - I am in my 500 thousandth reincarnation.

[smile]

Thanks for that Pied Piper, it's the first time I have laughed out loud at something written on these pages!

I remember reading in some history book that the gold that oozed out of the cooking fires at night, once it was found cool and solidified the following morning, was first used as jewelery by the women of the tribes.

It was aparently used as a sign of prestige among the earlier peoples, so it follows that the men wanted to have some of the gold for their own use as well.

I imagine they found out that it was a reasonably soft, but yet heavy, material and after molding it into various jewelery pieces, some enterprising male thought they could use it as the head of a heavy weapon to crush skulls with or suchlike?

I should imagine that the deriving of metals from ores by humans could have come about as a by-product of early ceramic technology.

It seems almost inevitable that differences in the appearance or performance of the fired clay products of early potters would be intuitively linked to the presence or absence of various metal oxides or other minerals we would refer to as ores. This would be particularly so with regard to the glazing of pottery, which is a means to sealing it, making it water(or wine)tight.

The production of glazed pots requires reasonably high temperatures. It was probably noticed that charcoal, with enough air supplied, could produce a very hot kiln fire with little or no smoke. High temperature heat, the likely presence of other common minerals like limestone, and a reducing agent in the form of the charcoal commonly together in the same place as various ores for colouring glazes may have resulted in curious by-products on occasions, in the form of smelted metals.

Human curiosity, in an environment where other early technology (and labour) was concentrated, the pottery, may have slowly given rise to arty crafty metalwork as a sideline, yielding to more utilitarian applications of smelted metals as properties were noted and applications suggested themselves. Thus the surname Smith would duly come to displace Potter (in whatever language applied) with the onward march of technology, and the military-industrial-legislative axes of those bygone days displace the more naturally 'democratic' consumer oriented ceramics guilds in the vanguard of technology. You know what they say about the devil always finding work for idle hands ........

Far from things going to pot, however, they had come from pot! Humans had to be on their mettle, back then in the years before zero. If one could but go back and poll the potters, I feel sure they would back up this conjecture with a large majority.

Surely there must be plenty of erudite archaeological speculation as to how metallurgy developed, outside of the opinionate that is OLO. Why is it that you ask us, Two Dogs .......?