Out of the Fiery Furnace - Episode 1 - From Stone to Bronze
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- Опубліковано 30 бер 2016
- From the Stone Age to the era of the silicon chip - metals and minerals have marked the milestones of our civilization. OUT OF THE FIERY FURNACE traces the story of civilization through the exploitation of metals, minerals and energy resources. Renowned radio and BBC television commentator Michael Charlton hosts seven, one-hour programs filmed in more than 50 different parts of the world. This very unusual public television series combines the disciplines of history, science, archeology and economics in order to explore the relationship between technology and society.
How did human beings first come to recognize metals buried in rocks? Michael Charlton visits an archaeological dig at a Stone Age settlement to uncover the ways in which our early ancestors extracted metal from rock. This episode visits several dramatic locations, including India and the Sinai Desert to follow remarkable experiments using the smelting techniques of the ancient civilizations. You'll also travel to Thailand to find a possible answer to a great mystery: how did bronze come to be invented in the Middle East where there are no deposits of a necessary element - tin? (60 minutes)
Download full video (MP4), subtitles and original VHS cover art (860MB): tinyurl.com/outoffieryfurnace...
Disclaimer: This video series, produced in 1986 by Opus Films is shown here for Educational Purposes. It includes footage of cultures in India, China, Near East, etc. and ancient methods of manufacturing metals. It is hoped that this information is useful for archival and educational purposes to viewers all across the world. The video is provided here under the Fair Use policy. - Наука та технологія
These older documentaries are really much better done and more informative than the ones we see today, not to mention much comfortable to watch.
Most are lies today.
They were created for literates. Today's productions are aimed at the post-literate.
Still corporate propaganda but doesn’t assume audience are total morons unlike today
Yes... If this were made today, it would have 95% less info and 9500% more graphics and aggressive music, and it would be super-macho and hardcore.
The Temu ads are a brutal contrast.
This was painful to watch. History through the eyes of the colonizers.
I remember getting stoned and watching these videos in high school
i'm so old i remember getting stoned for using metal and offending gods of stone
The kind of documentary that would’ve been shown to me when I was in junior high back in the early 80s. The kind that would’ve been trotted out by a substitute teacher filling in. I would’ve daydreamed back then or goofed off, but now I’m enthralled with the information. All so fascinating. And the nostalgic, sentimental style and time period this type of documentary is from sits so well with me.
100% accurate. I actually had to watch these videos as a part of a course I took back in the early 00s. Tedious back then but now I'm happy to watch it in my free time for free on UA-cam.
I like these pre 2000 Documentaries much more than today's NGC docs.
I thought it was rubbish - not enough rap music or wise Marxist teaching.
@@kayharker712 the patriarchy made iron to make sure Wahmyn were chattel
Agreed
The info is very dated.
They weren't full of bs ideological politically correct nonsense
Can someone please show this to Ea-Nasir? His low quality copper is a disgrace. I traded with many a merchant and nobody has ever treated me with contempt like he did.
I remember watching this on TV years ago, I was fascinated by it then as I still am now. It encompasses many aspects of mankind's ascent through the ages from developing stone tools through to sophisticated steel alloys used in todays mechanical marvels. It is a wonderful series and I just wish it was available on DVD, somewhere, anywhere.
FYI viewers - some of this is outdated. EG. the Ban Chiang bronzes are more reliably dated to more recent than 2500 BC around the same time Britain got bronze. Still doesn't mean that Thais learned it from Babylon tho
Jericho is also now understood to be the earliest city, 10 k years iirc.
Btw love your content, fancy meeting you here
There are also ancient tin mines in Kestel turkey staring at around 3250bc. I don’t think they found them until after this doc was made
@The Truth about Africa hurts Catal Hoyuk does not, Gobekli Tepe does but is not a city. Reread my comment.
@survivethejive It's u for the third time u must have good taste
Thanks for uploading this! I cannot tell you how happy I am to have discovered this series last year on UA-cam. I was curious whether any sort of documentary about the history of metallurgy even existed and i found this! I am not surprised it was made long before I was even born. Docmentaries that came before 1995 (my birth year) tend to be some of the most well made and well researched.
You're welcome.
This is an excellent documentary. It must have been ground-breaking for it's time. I'm disappointed it only has less than a thousand likes.
Shh... keep it like a secret.
I'm a geology student of old and always thought metals were overlooked. I love this series.
As of March 4, 2024, it has 2.8 thousand likes.
*At the **49:55** mark, it's stated that bronze is 90% copper and 10% tin, but this isn't always so... Different ratios yield bronze alloys with varying properties, and so different ratios are used, commonly referred to with a shorthand, "B", followed by the percentage number of the tin used... For example, the aforementioned 90% copper/10% alloy would be referred to as, "B10 Bronze". As for examples of different alloys used for different purposes..., in the modern manufacture of musical instrument cymbals, there are several alloys used, but two predominate... For the premium and traditional, "Turkish style", cast ingot style of cymbal, B20 bronze is used, as it's malleable enough to be press rolled and hammered into shape, while less expensive B8 bronze is used for budget/student cymbals, as it is ideal to be press cut from large rolls of sheet bronze, a property that B20 bronze will not allow... This is just one example... For another, in the tradition of casting bronze bells, especially the great bells, as used in the great churches and temples of Europe and Asia, the bell-smiths would vary the ratio of copper to tin depending on the tuning, tamboral, and structural requirements desired...*
@@wildrose2748 ...and you must be that one guy that cusses and insults people, being a complete asshole jerk that people don't like to be around, as you try to intimidate and manipulate people with your childish temper tantrums...
I'm sure such refinement was a matter about 4kya if 40 ya, but I'll be looking for the B rating of my bells cymbals & swords from now.😁
Few documentaries reveal this nicely so much about theories of human development.
Thanks for uploading this series. Have been looking for it since we first saw it on PBS in the mid 1980s. It has disappeared from PBS videos and libraries. Excellent documentary.
So lovely to hear English spoken so well.
Yes and no. Yes for the script, no for the annoying pedantic declamatory style of speech of the main presenter.
I prefer cockney
sounds like cricket commentary to me
@@goognamgoognw6637 "annoying pedantic declamatory"?? Michael Charlton's delivery is the standard accent of most presenters back in the day; nothing pedantic about it. Take a look at this body language and overall demeanour; not a hint of affectedness or posturing; a steady, calm voice with no posh outbursts. A natural presenter whose accent was that of an Australian who'd been living in Britain for quite some years.
Alternative theory for the "accidental" discovery of smelting: Chimney effect! If you build a cylindrical kiln and blast air into it from below, it gets hotter than anything they might have seen. They might have just been playing with that, and seeing if they could get rocks to burn, or whatever. Early science. Playing around. Make the hottest fire ever!
Or they used drugs, and had a vision. Its perfectly legit explanation. Ppl on drugs do all sorts of things. Say mishrooms and such, natural potent psychadelics. Who knows.
@Matthew Tymczyszyn Catal Huyuk had/has chimneys... thats 7000BC. It makes sense
Yes. I posted my comment and then saw yours. I agree.
Also these ancient people knew about native copper, and they surely would have seen verdigris forming on copper, they probably knew that copper and malachite (same thing as verdigris) were somehow connected before they knew how to convert one to the other.
They made a huge fire with rocks lining it then a big wind came in and made the fire roar. The next day they notice this orange metal, or black or white. You get the point.
Old documentaries are the best!
Made in 1986, but still very relevant, since it tells the story of ancient man. The picture is just slightly muddy in places, but it's still very interesting and relevant. I enjoyed it a lot!
Thank you for sharing this. Believe it or not, I have been looking for this series ever since it first aired on my local public television station in Los Angeles back in 1986. For anyone interested in ancient history this first episode is particularly interesting.
I know. Many people were looking for this documentary. It is a very important bit of history, the footage of ancient smelting practices alone puts it well above other docus on history, at least ones I've seen.
ditto - watching this on TLC The Learning Channel - via Sat in France in 1986.
Out Of The Fiery Furnace l
I remember I saw it long long time ago. In Jugoslavia.
Wondering if in all this time there has been any peace in Afghanistan to further investigate exploitation of tin deposits.
The parts where they show processes still being used are extra interesting
Paul
Especially with the Aborigines.
This has the feel of the kind of thing they used to show us in Jr. High. Thanks for the upload.
Great to hear Michael Charlton again.
Very informative video series on the transition of the metal age from copper to the Iron Age. Compliments to the uploader as well as the producers. The number of views and likes of this video goes to show much we appreciate really well made and informative videos than some of the useless crap peddled on the more popular shows!!
I love this series. Ancient metallurgy so fascinating.
This is amazing. Thank you for uploading. This is the exact information i`ve been searching for. Gonna watch every episode.
I missed this series way back when. Thanks for the upload !!!!!!!!!!!!1
Fantastic series. Wow, what a presenter. Such high quality. They dont kake them like that anymore.
Thx for making this available, recommended.
Great stuff.
Many thanks to uploader.
A fascinating documentary. Thanks for posting it up.
Excellent documentary. Just the right amount of detail.
This was fascinating. Thanks
its stunning seeing him being in all the places he talks about, such a departure from seeing just b roll in newer stuff lol
This is a wonderful video. It's relevant enough to still be informative after all this time. The main host has a faith in technology and a belief in upward, human progress that I haven't seen since I was a kid. I'd like to see this whole series redone and the history reviewed for more recent, accepted, academic research.
I love these old-style British documentaries, they remind me of films I watched as a child in school (although most of them were from National Geographic, they were great). As a geologist and an ancient history student, this is such a great topic for me. It’s too bad about the poor quality, it looks like a VCR recording from a film broadcast on television. It’s almost unwatchable, but listenable.
It was transferred from a video tape to digital format using the highest quality equipment. The source was still video tape, unfortunately. The tapes were very difficult to find. Glad you like the videos though.
Thank you so much for posting this series! Been wanting to see it since PBS!
Our pleasure!
Great video, and the I love the music at the very start of the video. Thak you.
Being a british and american production, they meticulously omit the most accessible and obvious possibility: southern Spain and Tartessian culture. The Sierra Morena pyritic belt is probably the richest source of copper and tin in the ancient world, and its use is firmly confirmed by archeology in the early 2nd millennium BC. The ships of Tharsis that are so praised in The Bible.
its just amazing that the same flint stone technology thats been found just a couple of kms away from where i live in north western kenya is also evident almost thoiusands of kms away in the deserts of australia. our ancestors must have been some insane marathon runners
David Anthony - (in his Horse Wheel and Language) postulates that early metallurgy came from firing pottery. Certain kinds of firings (like Raku) will end up with the metals present in the clay on the surface.
This is explored and demonstrated in the documentary.
Most excellent 👍
It was actually produced in 1983. It first aired in the US in 1986.
That explains the flared jeans the workers were wearing. Those are clearly 1970s clothes. 😊
Thank you
Good to hear Michael Charlton again
Great arrow tip.
How can that be when they have been finding ancient cities with clearly intelligent & timely advanced civilizations that are around 10 to 20 thousand years old?
No they have not. You clearly don't know what the word "city" means. Look it up. And look up "civilization" too.
The oldest known civilization seems for now to be Jericho, and it is not 20,000 yrs old.
Nor are Catal Hoyuk, Gobeckli Tepe, or Karahan Tepe. And those last 3 are not cities or civilizations anyway. None of them are 20,000 yo.
As well, you are trying to show off with that post, but you have failed completely. That's because people with any knowledge at all do not talk about cities with a spread of 10 to 20,000 yrs! Do you have any concept at all of how much change occurred in the space of 10,000 yrs?! Obviously you have none.
Before you say such ridiculous things, and make a fool of yourself in the process, you should learn some ancient history or archeology from some reputable sources. Not Graham Hancock, or any other nutcase who believes in aliens and conspiracies, like History channel docs, or those from Discovery Channel. Sadly, even Netflix and other streaming services have lost all sense of conscience and/or responsibility and are showing tons of that garbage. I was even shocked like crazy to see that National Geographic is now publishing videos about aliens ! ! ! They all claim it's just entertainment, and that makes it ok!
The crooks in charge know damn well that many extremely stupid and gullible people actually believe that crap, yet they don't care. Nobody cares about anything but money now! The world has become such an awful place! There used to be laws that you couldn't publish lies like that. And there should still be.
PLEASE don't fall into believing that BS about aliens! It seems that so far you have not, and I commend you for it SO MUCH ! ! !
But you do have a bit to learn before you start posting stuff about ancient civilizations, just as I did, not too long ago. (I hope I deleted all my old comments!) So please Google or search UA-cam using the words "ancient cities" and "ancient civilizations", and use only the reliable sources you find, that are attached to or related to reputable universities or organizations.
this is an essential for every millennial a story of real work
Interesting that apparently news traveled fast in the " ancient" world.
In quotation because 5000 years ago is only a few seconds of geological time and the age of modern man.
Maybe the first time that I've heard the term iconoclast used correctly. Perhaps not in the byzantine definition, but at least the modern one.
one thing though was not explained, or at least i did not hear about it,
where did the wood or charcoal come from?
the hills and valleys must have been full of trees?
and those were used to heat the furnaces?
or was the dessert always there?
and any wood or charcoal had to be brought in from who knows where?
That pottery workshop in India looked so peaceful and happy back then
I hadn’t heard of the Cave of Treasures in Israel, those artifacts are wonderful!
The Metropolitan in NYC had some of these Hahal Mishmar cave bronze pieces on display but took them down the last time I was there two years ago. They are amazing. Some were ternary bronzes Copper-Arsenic-Nickel.
This is a good series, I am going to watch all of them before I start my thesis on Alchemy next year. I however disagree with the contention that Mesopotamian empires would not have been able to gather tin. Actually the ancient cities of Babylon, Nineveh, and many others had extensive trade not only by land but sea. While the other innovations in Thailand and China are interesting, there is no reason to think that Assyrians and other original civilizations could not have gathered valuable materials. It is well known Assyrians extended their influence from Germany to the Far East.
Make this mandatory viewing for all Children.
The difference between stone users and metal users is simply this: Metal users had access to trade with the rest of civilization. Stone users were remote and isolated. They existed at the SAME TIME, just as stone-tool societies exist even today in remote regions.
remastering to digital sharpens old film, colours can also be enhanced and clarified
It can't seperate from the slag as long as it is allowed to pour out onto the soil, it will create new slag. It needs to be skimmed off, then poured out onto a clean form such as a stone basin, without coming in contact with the soil.
@@wildrose2748 Why would you assume that? Simple logic would make it plain to you. After all, they were discussing in the video how that metal still had slag in it, and they didn't prevent it. So clearly, they didn't anticipate it being pointless to even try in the manner that they did. So they must not have known why their process could not remove the slag, actually for more than the one reason I had mentioned.
"Flint chippings from thousands of years of toolmaking" I sure would not want to walk around there in bare feet!
Why isn't John Cleese walking up to the narrator in the opening scene to hit him with a rubber chicken?
That was always a danger whilst filming these old documentaries.
Andy Her
Good point.
Because it was "now this"....
“And now for something completely different..”
I've made many of my camp fires hot enough to smelt all kinds of metallic elements. These archeologists are lacking in the, "just because you haven't done it don't mean it's not a possibility department".
Blowing through tubes into a fire can do it.
"[I]t's right to wary of claims of ... primacy." You betcha.
Go Commonwealth Aluminum!
History Channel: It was actually because of ancient aliens that we discovered metallurgy....
😂
He describes how mankind accidently discovered smelting the first metals out of ores.......copper. Then a beer commercial appears, showing some one opening an aluminum can of beer.......perfect! First copper, then aluminum!
When I was a kid I watched documentaries like this all the time, I'm sad for the kids like I was who are interested in history and end up watching all the garbage put out by the history channel. It almost feels like they are going out of their way to present so many ridiculous theories (ancient aliens, monster quest, that stuff) with no real proof in an effort to make it so we can't truly believe anything we try and learn about.
Is the Gulf of Aqaba on the Silk Road? Near the Silk Road?
It’s also called the Gulf of Eilat. The coastline is divided among the countries of Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, situated at the northern tip of the Red Sea. Hope this helps.
If anyone can recommend other documentaries like this series it would be appreciated :)
Yep. PBS's Raw to Ready series, especially the episode about Komatsu gives some great info on the chemistry behind steel alloys. You can watch it here: ua-cam.com/video/vhVxOleTHJg/v-deo.html
@@outofthefieryfurnace6163 are yall ever planning on making a new version of this series?
I always find myself pondering the question of how man figured out bronze all over the world, the Americans and the old world.
Great video buddy. My channel is about scrap metal and I go out scrapping on my bike. I think you'd be very surprised at the sheer amounts of cable bring back.. Not in one day of course. But over a week. In a month a fill up a ton bag. I'd like to stat melting copper sometime into ingots for friends.
how did the tin in Afganistan get to the other places around the globe where bronze is found.?
With the discovery of tin came the bronze age. (now had it been the discovery of zinc, then it would have been the Brass age (better known as the era of Musical bands) as Brass is soft too so NOT Weapons. Just a bunch of musicians like Tijuana Brass. Zinc deposits are more common than Tin. I learn stuff I did not know before and that is always interesting.
ad the right amount of arsenic. That is where Hephaistos has his crippled leg from.
Well come to Rajasthan 🙏
This site should be memorialized or made into a state park, protected, a history site or history museum. Get what I'm trying to say?
For some reason I feel like these dates are off 🤷🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️
I can't get Episode 1 to load.
Fixed it now.
Thanks.
@@outofthefieryfurnace6163 k
Did anyone get the ad about aluminum?
and, so?
early humans were metal af
Made with special ingredient Tin! from the faraway lands of tinland. I dunno my dealer doesn't tell me where he gets it.
How is it that the pre-metal stone age technology Aboriginal man at 4:40 had a white 5 O-clock shadow? Did he shave three days ago somehow?
Because most Aboriginal people live in, or with access to, 'Communities', which are hybrid cultures of European style towns populated mostly by Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people have houses, cars, bank accounts and shaving razors, like anyone else. It's a very strange, tense, and many may argue, very unsuccessful situation. Western colonisers worked hard to obliterate everything they could about the native inhabitants' way of life since they began taking over the land 200 years ago. The filmmakers of this documentary most likely went to an outback community town and hired some men to be filmed. They went out to a space in the desert with a film crew. I just asked my white housemate who lived on a Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory for several years when he was a teenager, where his mum worked as the school teacher. That's what he told me. 😊
They had flint, from which you can get (or knap) razor sharp blades.
Do we have gold rivers flowing below us
I wish this series could be remade with higher resolution. Its so good but it would look amazing in 4k.
I am not sure it would be possible, it is amazing that they got that footage of the metal artisans all over the world showing their craft to them. Maybe Netflix could do it.
It's entirely natural to blow on embers to restart the previous night's fire. It's not much of a stretch from that to developing bellows. From there it would be natural to use the bellows to raise the temperature to speed up cooking. Stones would be heated to be dropped into water or soup/stews. All it would take would be a combination of the right kind of stones being heated with bellows, possibly in a kiln-like fireplace - which, again, would have been a natural development, from experimenting with different fireplace designs.
Old info not up to date on timelines.
& bruh Dave : Africa had the earliest dates when using iron first ☮️
@@charisseagnew1788 lmao no
@@charisseagnew1788 no
It’s 40 years old, what did you expect?
Jumped right past arsenical bronze, to reach tin based bronze.
Well, at about 23:09 they discuss the Nahal Mishmar hoard, the objects there were a mix of arsenical bronze (Cu-As) and nickel arsenical bronze (Cu-As-Ni). They were cast into molds believe it or not. Metal objects of similar composition were found in royal tombs of Arslantepe in Eastern Anatolia. Both finds are dated to the period between 4000 - 3000 BC or early bronze age, sometimes called the chalcolithic age.
What about the Copper age? Wasn't that after the stone age but before the bronze age?
Yeah, and when was the Tin Age?
He discussed the Copper Age extensively, were you asleep?
@@lukehauser1182 There wasn’t one.
@@kimberlyperrotis8962 Ii think there was one, but it was very short :)
As a matter of fact, many metallurgical historians believe that smelting and alloying started basically at the same time as the so called Copper Age. The earliest smelting of copper metal dates back to 7500 - 7000 years ago at Pločnik and Belovode, Serbia. Also, many of the so called copper artifacts are actually arsenical bronze, that is copper deliberately alloyed with arsenic, which would require a furnace with a reducing atmosphere, and in that sense they are a type of bronze, and not native copper. This is a big problem in ancient metallurgy because those bronzes are improperly classified as just being copper.
I heard the random hot fire theory of the discovery of metallurgy in University. The pottery kiln makes more sense. An artist, with his desire to make a plain piece of functional pottery more appealing to the eye, is responsible for modern civilization.
How to turn a rock into a computer?
What did they use in the smelters.....there isn't a stick anywhere in sight
Corn Dog - it make not have been so arid, then . I think that the times, he’s talking about, were the end of the last ice age. Much of Northern Europe was covered in ice. So where he is would have been much wetter and cooler
The Cedars of Lebanon were not a legend. A lot of the area was wooded before military requirements caused their destruction.
poop.
Fuel? A Fomenko suggests slash and burn vast deforestation for farming all across Russia.
Horses were domesticated in russia or Tartary recently. Slash and burn of northern forests brought charcoal and bronze metalurgy. Til then everyone was on foot and rafts. The shang burial of the horse came after. The New chronology brings everything up in time. Discoveries are no less important. Dark ages and lost and found episodes disappear from the story, and technological development curves regain their natural shape. People of the world are not viewed as primitive ignorant descendents of ancient geniuses, simply broken up parts of a world network that shattered in the sixteenth century and was usurped by governors of certain provinces.
Pottery
2:00 well... the first thing he did was plant an American flag to humiliate the Russians
According to the Book Of Enoch, mankind was taught this and many other arts by the evil fallen angels.
And as the Bible says, what the devil intended for evil, God turns to good.
Wonderful series!! Very glad to discover it now. Thanks, YT.
I REALLY hate to rain on your parade but the only place where bronze working started as late as 2000 BC was Scandinavia! There's no evidence bronzeworking began in Laos here.
What did these fires burn? There are no trees or coal around there.
Dung
facts are wrong, south america used stone tools not just australia then
i wonder how much of the history here is outdated by new discoveries in the years after this was produced?
Kestel, Turkey, seems to be the earliest source of tin. Mined by children, it seems.
All fine except for scaligerian ancient dating.
thats the arc of the covenant. they used it as a pig trough to insult the Israelites XD
So much dwelling on those that didn’t discover metallurgy. Still trying to keep people down…. It’s an old film, but still.
Students, beware! This 1986 documentary contains a lot of extremely outdated, disproven and blatantly wrong information. Archaeology has come a long way in the 35 years since this documentary was made. If you're researching early civilizations and early technologies please be sure to consult a variety of updated sources to get the benefit of everything we now know about history, based on new evidence, new digs and new research. Keep asking questions and hunting for more information! 😊
Any recommended updated documentaries?
Would you give one example?
Students should rely on professional, peer-reviewed articles and books, not UA-cam or television. This series is just an introduction to this topic, why would you expect it to be updated and scholarly, it was made 40 years ago!
not sure how modern life constitutes progress unless you consider living in a polluted nightmare, steadily overheating the planet, and watching the 6th great extinction event, caused by humans, as progress.
Humans are not causing warming. Only brain washed people think that.