[OT] [I mean totally OT] Re: What can you "new"

[Don]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Sean Kelly wrote:
>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Even writing has its problems. What are you going to write on? Bark? 
>>>> Animal hides? How are you going to make paper? Ink? A 
>>>> hunter-gatherer tribe may find it not worth the effort, and so the 
>>>> writing will not "take".
>>>
>>> The Maya wrote on treated Birch Bark, which apparently worked great 
>>> until Spanish Missionaries burned all their libraries :-)  Sumerians 
>>> used fired clay tablets for writing, and treated animal hides were 
>>> pretty popular until relatively recently (Vellum, for instance). 
>>> Vegetable dyes would make decent ink, if needed.
>>
>> It's the "treating" that's the problem. Do you know how to treat 
>> animal hides? I sure don't! I saw the process once on TV and it looked 
>> rather involved.
> 
> I know that hide can be tanned using urine, which I suppose is why 
> tanneries were reputed to smell so horrible.  It would have to be 
> scraped clean without wrecking it as well, perhaps with a Clam shell? 
> Either way, charcoal on cave walls would definitely be easier :-)
> 
>> Could you even recognize iron ore?
> 
> Or dig it up?  Some of the earliest chapters in the Bible mention Iron 
> so I imagine the knowledge has been around for some time, but definitely 
> not before agriculture.

(EG, Goliath had an iron spear, in the middle of the bronze age).
Most of the early iron came from pure-iron meteorites -- they knew about 
iron, but finding it was pure luck.