I met him once, for an afternoon shamanic workshop, hoping for some insight into how sincere all this was. My guess is that he was frustrated in his professional career, and hoped to become the next Castaneda. But it's nice to see this sort of book written by an anthropologist, with the expertise that brings. BTW I suspect the premise began as a post-nuclear war scenario (hence all the escaped zoo animals), and was only later turned into cli-fi.
Nainoa and his people are ethnically Hawaiian, but live around what we would call northern California (e.g. the Bay area), which they settled centuries ago. I doubt they have much contact with Hawaii anymore, considering the distances involved. There is an inland sea where the Central Valley is now, which Nainoa crosses.
I always wished there would be another book mentioning what happened to Eurasia, but no.
Thank you for pointing me at this post, Shane. I'll look up the book! Interestingly, your minor objection to his worldbuilding caught my eye because Wesselman shares my own conjectures about the minimal role iron will play in the future. I base my case mostly on the energetic aspects; iron simply doesn't FEEL right to most of the people in these future cultures of my novels. But there is also the need:expense ratio to consider, especially since I project that most of the "mining", even 700 years after The Big One (CSZ 9.0 w/tsunami) will still be scavenging from the increasingly rare materials lying around from the American era. Gathering baskets of rust as an ore would certainly work to produce cast iron, but bronze is far easier to gather as it's not completely corroded and the melting point is several hundred degrees F lower, which means a lot less charcoal to make... The utility of steel is tremendous in an industrial culture with the full palette of technologies to produce it, tool it and utilize it, but steel is tricky to make and plain iron is really not an improvement on bronze for most purposes. Post industrial cultures might instead choose to use stone, bone, leather, wood, glass and bronze as each seems appropriate to their need, skills and availability.
Iron and steel are tremendously useful regardless of the level of industrialisation a culture has. there's a reason why whenever Europeans came in contact with "Stone age" tribes the most commonly traded items, the most requested, were steel axes, knives or even bits of scrap metal that could be cold-smithed into blades. The fact is that while Bronze is easier to cast, looks nicer, and is denser Steel can keep a far superior sharp edge that lasts longer, it is stronger in certain aspects such as hardness, and is lighter which is good in some applications. As such I strongly doubt that there will be any future cultures completely bereft of steel, the question is more whether there will be some people that live in areas favouable to steel manufacture and some who don't, thus needing to rely on outside trade for steel.
Something else which I think should be put into consideration is that it is likely that with the use of solar thermal technology one could reduce the amount of charcoal required for smelting via supplementing it with solar-heated air from some type of solar collector. Also we must consider our better knowledge of insulation and thermodynamics which must be preserved in some crude but practical form in the future.
Btw, check out this documentary detailing how Africans smelted iron for centuries with only clay, charcoal and wood. I think it would change your mind.
I do not disagree with your observations about the utility of good quality steel tools, just that steel is considerably more energy dense to produce and that melting old bronze faucets is way simpler than trying to create forgable iron from a basket of rust, let alone high carbon, tool steel. I stand by my position that bronze is superior to iron in almost every practical way. Properly tempered carbon steel is amazing stuff but the costs are incommensurate with the advantages. So what if a bronze blade doesn't hold an edge as long? The blade is far less likely to snap, it doesn't rust and it's far easier to sharpen. What possible practical use requires a blade to be razor sharp for thousands of hours? I have processed many large and small animals and in my experience an easily-sharpened knife is preferable to a difficult-to-sharpen blade simply because I will put off the time consuming, laborious sharpening process and continue to use the harder blade long after it is becoming dull. Similarly with using stone flake tools for skinning and butchering game, they are very sharp, grow dull rather quickly, but resharpen quickly, easily and cheaply. For things like axes and shovels, tough is preferable to hard as well.
The real reason historic cultures switched to iron was availability and thus affordability. There just wasn't enough tin available to produce the quantities of high quality bronze that European cultures required. In the future, with a much smaller population and lots of salvageable metals in the ruins, I think our heirs will use whatever material will do the job adequately with the minimum of expenditure. Deer leg bones make a fine point for an atlatl spear for example. A boomerang/rabbitstick for hunting waterfowl, while admittedly not as effective as a shotgun, is also monumentally less complex/expensive to produce, use and replace. The "best" tool for the job is not necessarily the one that actually does the job best. The best tool is the durable one that you have in your hand that does an adequate job and that you can easily/affordably sharpen, fix or replace as needed. Perhaps that IS high carbon/high energy steel for some highly specific purposes? But I'm thinking mostly not, especially in a post-fossil-fuel culture.
Storywise, it also leaves the possibility for ancient, heirloom steel implements to have cultural significance as named, individual creations (think Excalibur, Anduril or Old Betsy) Think of the traditional place of a muzzleloader, powderhorn and sword hanging above the mantle in 18th century Appalachian settler cabins. Those were undoubtedly the most expensive/valuable tools in most of those cabins and were kept well oiled and in the driest place in the house that was immediately to hand. Despite being far less useful than a good bow and arrows, these guns and swords were talismanic symbols as much as functional weapons. It is no different today actually; of what genuine USE is a semi-automatic, high capacity, short barrel, .223 caliber rifle other than in a melee? An "assault rifle" is the new "sword" or penis-symbol for insecure men everywhere. The symbols may change but the people don't!
As undeniable as your observations are, the fact that steel has been a common metal throughout Europe, Asia and Africa long before the use of fossil-fuels strongly suggests that it will continue to be the case after fossil-fuels are used up. True, there probably will be a reduction in their use due to energy-constraints, but they will still be in use.
That being said, there will also be areas where the factors you mention hold sway, and iron/steel will be a minor of nonexistent part or some people's lives. I strongly suspect Polynesia to be one such land.
I like these books, and did most of the summarizing of them for Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Wesselman
I met him once, for an afternoon shamanic workshop, hoping for some insight into how sincere all this was. My guess is that he was frustrated in his professional career, and hoped to become the next Castaneda. But it's nice to see this sort of book written by an anthropologist, with the expertise that brings. BTW I suspect the premise began as a post-nuclear war scenario (hence all the escaped zoo animals), and was only later turned into cli-fi.
Nainoa and his people are ethnically Hawaiian, but live around what we would call northern California (e.g. the Bay area), which they settled centuries ago. I doubt they have much contact with Hawaii anymore, considering the distances involved. There is an inland sea where the Central Valley is now, which Nainoa crosses.
I always wished there would be another book mentioning what happened to Eurasia, but no.
Thank you for pointing me at this post, Shane. I'll look up the book! Interestingly, your minor objection to his worldbuilding caught my eye because Wesselman shares my own conjectures about the minimal role iron will play in the future. I base my case mostly on the energetic aspects; iron simply doesn't FEEL right to most of the people in these future cultures of my novels. But there is also the need:expense ratio to consider, especially since I project that most of the "mining", even 700 years after The Big One (CSZ 9.0 w/tsunami) will still be scavenging from the increasingly rare materials lying around from the American era. Gathering baskets of rust as an ore would certainly work to produce cast iron, but bronze is far easier to gather as it's not completely corroded and the melting point is several hundred degrees F lower, which means a lot less charcoal to make... The utility of steel is tremendous in an industrial culture with the full palette of technologies to produce it, tool it and utilize it, but steel is tricky to make and plain iron is really not an improvement on bronze for most purposes. Post industrial cultures might instead choose to use stone, bone, leather, wood, glass and bronze as each seems appropriate to their need, skills and availability.
Iron and steel are tremendously useful regardless of the level of industrialisation a culture has. there's a reason why whenever Europeans came in contact with "Stone age" tribes the most commonly traded items, the most requested, were steel axes, knives or even bits of scrap metal that could be cold-smithed into blades. The fact is that while Bronze is easier to cast, looks nicer, and is denser Steel can keep a far superior sharp edge that lasts longer, it is stronger in certain aspects such as hardness, and is lighter which is good in some applications. As such I strongly doubt that there will be any future cultures completely bereft of steel, the question is more whether there will be some people that live in areas favouable to steel manufacture and some who don't, thus needing to rely on outside trade for steel.
Something else which I think should be put into consideration is that it is likely that with the use of solar thermal technology one could reduce the amount of charcoal required for smelting via supplementing it with solar-heated air from some type of solar collector. Also we must consider our better knowledge of insulation and thermodynamics which must be preserved in some crude but practical form in the future.
Btw, check out this documentary detailing how Africans smelted iron for centuries with only clay, charcoal and wood. I think it would change your mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ
I do not disagree with your observations about the utility of good quality steel tools, just that steel is considerably more energy dense to produce and that melting old bronze faucets is way simpler than trying to create forgable iron from a basket of rust, let alone high carbon, tool steel. I stand by my position that bronze is superior to iron in almost every practical way. Properly tempered carbon steel is amazing stuff but the costs are incommensurate with the advantages. So what if a bronze blade doesn't hold an edge as long? The blade is far less likely to snap, it doesn't rust and it's far easier to sharpen. What possible practical use requires a blade to be razor sharp for thousands of hours? I have processed many large and small animals and in my experience an easily-sharpened knife is preferable to a difficult-to-sharpen blade simply because I will put off the time consuming, laborious sharpening process and continue to use the harder blade long after it is becoming dull. Similarly with using stone flake tools for skinning and butchering game, they are very sharp, grow dull rather quickly, but resharpen quickly, easily and cheaply. For things like axes and shovels, tough is preferable to hard as well.
The real reason historic cultures switched to iron was availability and thus affordability. There just wasn't enough tin available to produce the quantities of high quality bronze that European cultures required. In the future, with a much smaller population and lots of salvageable metals in the ruins, I think our heirs will use whatever material will do the job adequately with the minimum of expenditure. Deer leg bones make a fine point for an atlatl spear for example. A boomerang/rabbitstick for hunting waterfowl, while admittedly not as effective as a shotgun, is also monumentally less complex/expensive to produce, use and replace. The "best" tool for the job is not necessarily the one that actually does the job best. The best tool is the durable one that you have in your hand that does an adequate job and that you can easily/affordably sharpen, fix or replace as needed. Perhaps that IS high carbon/high energy steel for some highly specific purposes? But I'm thinking mostly not, especially in a post-fossil-fuel culture.
Storywise, it also leaves the possibility for ancient, heirloom steel implements to have cultural significance as named, individual creations (think Excalibur, Anduril or Old Betsy) Think of the traditional place of a muzzleloader, powderhorn and sword hanging above the mantle in 18th century Appalachian settler cabins. Those were undoubtedly the most expensive/valuable tools in most of those cabins and were kept well oiled and in the driest place in the house that was immediately to hand. Despite being far less useful than a good bow and arrows, these guns and swords were talismanic symbols as much as functional weapons. It is no different today actually; of what genuine USE is a semi-automatic, high capacity, short barrel, .223 caliber rifle other than in a melee? An "assault rifle" is the new "sword" or penis-symbol for insecure men everywhere. The symbols may change but the people don't!
As undeniable as your observations are, the fact that steel has been a common metal throughout Europe, Asia and Africa long before the use of fossil-fuels strongly suggests that it will continue to be the case after fossil-fuels are used up. True, there probably will be a reduction in their use due to energy-constraints, but they will still be in use.
That being said, there will also be areas where the factors you mention hold sway, and iron/steel will be a minor of nonexistent part or some people's lives. I strongly suspect Polynesia to be one such land.