๐ค Technology¶
Estimated time to read: 5 minutes
Steel¶
Iron production began in Anatolia about 2000 bc, and the Iron Age was well established by 1000 bc. The technology of iron making then spread widely; by 500 bc it had reached the western limits of Europe, and by 400 bc it had reached China. Iron ores are widely distributed, and the other raw material, charcoal, was readily available. The iron was produced in small shaft furnaces as solid lumps, called blooms, and these were then hot forged into bars of wrought iron, a malleable material containing bits of slag and charcoal.
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When the carbon content of steel is above 0.3 percent, the material will become very hard and brittle if it is quenched in water from a temperature of about 850ยฐ to 900ยฐ C (1,550ยฐ to 1,650ยฐ F). The brittleness can be decreased by reheating the steel within the range of 350ยฐ to 500ยฐ C (660ยฐ to 930ยฐ F), in a process known as tempering. This type of heat treatment was known to the Egyptians by 900 bc, as can be judged by the microstructure of remaining artifacts, and formed the basis of a steel industry for producing a material that was ideally suited to the fabrication of swords and knives.
โ Britannica: Technology > Industry > Steel
I donโt think this strictly precludes Jaredites having steel, but it does look like theyโre around 1500 years too early to claim they had steel as we know it today. Very likely they had iron.
One could argue that theyโre calling it steel, and weโd call it iron today.
Either this is the most correct book on the planet, or itโs not.
Steel swords¶
Wherefore, he came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor, and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib.
โ Ether 7:9
And again, they have brought swords, the hilts thereof have perished, and the blades thereof were cankered with rust; and there is no one in the land that is able to interpret the language or the engravings that are on the plates. Therefore I said unto thee: Canst thou translate?
โ Mosiah 8:11
Where are all of the iron slag piles from this iron/steel swords that were made in the New world during the Book of Mormon times? That byproduct would be very hard to miss. Primitive America probably didn't have a way to ecologically dispose of it, to hide it from us today.
Paper¶
And they brought their wives and children together, and whosoever believed or had been taught to believe in the word of God they caused that they should be cast into the fire; and they also brought forth their records which contained the holy scriptures, and cast them into the fire also, that they might be burned and destroyed by fire.
โ Alma 14:8
Burning their records? This isn't explicitly stated as being written on paper, but... brass plates aren't going to burn so easily. I'm quite certain that printing presses didn't exist, so presumably this was written by hand. On... papyrus? Did they have that technology? Honest question, I don't have an answer for this one.
I've read that paper itself is an old technology, dating to China's Eastern Han period.
Papermaking can be traced to about [105 CE], when Tsโai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court of China, created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishnets, old rags, and hemp waste. In its slow travel westward, the art of papermaking reached Samarkand, in Central Asia, in 751; and in 793 the first paper was made in Baghdad during the time of Hฤrลซn ar-Rashฤซd, with the golden age of Islฤmic culture that brought papermaking to the frontiers of Europe.
โ Papermaking, Britannica
Well... does this verify that paper was also a well-established industry to provide multiple copies of printed scriptures to burn by the year 82 BCE in ancient America, as described in Alma 14? Because identifying the origin of the technology to approximately 105 CE lands us in a tough spot to explain this.
Literacy in ancient America is a separate issue entirely. Text recorded on paper isn't useful if lay people are illiterate. In order for this story in Alma 14 to make sense (to me) we need enough lay people to be literate in order warrant enough economical demand for paper copies of scripture in the first place. Not only will these people need to be able to read and understand the text, but they need to see enough value in it that they will want their own personal copyโ another logistical problem without a printing press.
Maybe I'm looking too deep into one interpretation. "[T]heir records which contained the holy scriptures" isn't strictly required to be paper. If they were not recorded on paper, then they must have been etched onto metal plates, much like our pals Mormon & Moroni gained a reputation for doing. Putting etched metal sheets into a fire might char them, but much like a contentious discourse about the temperature of jet fuel being enough to melt certain structural materials, I question if "their records which contained the holy scriptures" were thrown into a crucible to be molten back into a raw material?
Either way, I see a logistical problem. We should see evidence of these industries being widespread enough to permit all of these records that are being thrown into a fire. Even if it's multiple small forges to manufacture metal sheets, rather than one big industrial factory, that's something archaeologists would have spotted by now. If they were paper mills, I imagine we'd see evidence of that, too. In either case, we'd see signs of literacy being prevalent in ancient America. I have yet to encounter compelling evidence of any of these three things that would make burning scriptures make any goddamned sense.