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History of Technology 4: Iron Weapons Hit the Scene 111 Views
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Description:
It's time to learn about how iron revolutionized weaponry way back when. You know the old saying: out with the bronze, in with the iron! ...Is that not a saying? It should be.
Transcript
- 00:02
With a few exceptions the weapons of the Bronze Age were the same old
- 00:05
weapons used until the invention of gunpowder swords shields arrows and [two men fighting on horses with swords]
- 00:10
armor yeah they all stayed functionally the same basically we were stuck with
- 00:15
any weapon you might see in Lord of the Rings [Frodo looking out a window]
- 00:17
minus the one ring that gives us the power to rule them all and/or turns people
Full Transcript
- 00:22
into bug-eyed frog looking things don't believe us I'll find ye of little faith
- 00:28
check this out Alexander the Great was given a suit of armor that was 900 years [Alexander the Great taking a suit of armor]
- 00:32
old and he actually used it in battle that means that in 900 years armor
- 00:40
hadn't changed enough to make it's older styles obsolete and today an iPhone one [Alexander the Great fighting]
- 00:46
is a rare and mysterious antique so yeah not too many changes but one thing that
- 00:50
did change well, the use of iron iron got hot around 800 BCE back when tin became [hot iron burning]
- 00:56
too scarce to continue making bronze and well everything ushered in the Iron Age
- 01:01
and it was pretty popular ever heard of the Romans, war like guys with coolness [Roman wearing a helmet and waving a sword]
- 01:06
logical stories and food elements they used iron weapons they also had
- 01:11
questionable taste in head wear but their taste in weapons oh, that was solid [roman wearing a weird helmet]
- 01:15
iron weapons were just like bronze weapons on steroids or maybe they just
- 01:19
had a good workout routine in the end iron helped create the weapons that [two romans holding swords together]
- 01:23
defined medieval warfare and were used in the conquest of Rome
- 01:27
the War of the Roses the Crusades and the Mongol invasion all right well iron
- 01:33
like copper is a natural element on earth unfortunately for us getting from [woman pushing a shopping cart around a store]
- 01:37
iron ore to a fancy iron sword is not easy it has to be purified heated and
- 01:42
then beaten into submission in the appropriate shape how else did you think
- 01:47
those blacksmith got such hulking biceps well in the earliest iron forges that [blacksmith working topless]
- 01:53
process was slow and unreliable they might forge one batch of iron with a
- 01:57
high carbon content which would be almost as strong as pure steel well at [man waving a shiny iron sword]
- 02:02
the very next batch would be brittle weak and full of impurities from the
- 02:06
entire process took hundreds of years to perfect iron became an industry for the
- 02:10
first time in Anatolia or modern Turkey around 1200 BCE and lots
- 02:16
of other cultures and peoples were figuring out iron working around the [Selection of different cultures]
- 02:19
same time including the Chinese Indians and West Africans you know what they say
- 02:24
there are no new ideas because the Chinese Indians and West Africans are
- 02:29
figuring things out all the time and already invented them yeah, it's not how the [woman stood at front of a class and children look puzzled]
- 02:33
saying goes well should be. Anyway the many overlapping time periods mean that
- 02:37
there aren't any clear-cut dates for the Iron Age just a jumble of different
- 02:41
times when people did or did not have iron but whenever and wherever it showed [timeline of the iron age beginning]
- 02:46
up Iron stuck an iron dagger in the Bronze Age it was tougher more durable
- 02:51
sharper and heavier than bronze, sorry bronze you had your day in the [iron pushes bronze off a sunlounger]
- 02:55
sun but remember military technology didn't change until the end of the
- 02:59
Middle Ages the basic nature of most weapons did not shift iron just gave them
- 03:05
superpowers it wouldn't be until the rise of the Jedi that swords would take next [Jedi cutting iron swords in half]
- 03:10
leap boy that never happened in reality sounds like is a retirement
- 03:14
project for Bill Gates [Bill Gates installing Windows 10]
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