In some cases, superior European swords like the +VLFBERH+T swords (171 of them discovered so far?) may actually have been made of the same stuff as Wootz swords, using Wootz ingots obtained through trade networks and then crafted into blades by Norse or Frankish craftsmen. (Norsemen used the blades, but they were inscribed with +VLFBERH+T and later +VLFBERHT+, which was possibly a Frankish name.)
And wasn’t the reinvention in Meissen a strange story? Going for gold, failing, but getting China instead. Alchemy!
It’s my understanding that a lot of the differences in metallurgy from one part of the world to another weren’t due to differences in skill of the craftsmen, but to differences in impurities in the raw materials. So if you took a master Damascus swordsmith, and gave him ore from a different mine, he wouldn’t be able to produce a Damascus blade, but a swordsmith from elsewhere using Damascus ore might be able to.
I had worked in improving the efficiency of a Blast Furnace (College internship) and Bessemer’s converter, and then later on in life I worked on Hydrogen (syngas) plants for reducing Iron ore to sponge iron. That got me interested in Damascus steel; and I have explored it a bit. Unfortunately, much of the making of this steel is shrouded in mystery and no one really knows. The Invaders managed to kill the craftsmen and the knowhow, just like the British managed to kill the craftsmen/knowhow of making Indian Muslin (Dacca muslin)
Most of Indian Iron Ores including the ones in south (region where Damascus was made) come from Banded Iron Formations (BIFs). These are found in sedimentary rocks formed during the Pre-Cambrian age. They represent the Great Oxidation Event on earth, when earth went from a CO2 atmosphere to Oxygen atmosphere. “Most BIFs are chemically simple, containing little but iron oxides, silica, and minor carbonate” - Banded iron formation - Wikipedia
Bottom-line : BIFs occur in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, and the United States. Iron Ore in Europe (Russia / Ukraine) is pretty much the same in India.
This is gross misunderstanding. Swordsmiths / blacksmiths never dealt with making steel from ore. Ore was smelted and billets provided to swordsmiths to work on.
As an analogy: Plumbers do not cast or forge pipes, they work with premade pipes.
The making of steel was a community or industrial effort, needing the organization and cooperation of 100s or 10 of individuals, round the clock. Since there were no air blowers, people used to smelt steel using the winds during monsoons. This meant the design and construction of massive furnaces that could work on the wind. It meant ore crushing / grinding systems; conveying systems to feed the ore, systems to keep the molten iron moving, etc. etc. All this would be accomplished within a narrow window of time, dictated by the monsoons. I would love to learn the details, perhaps I will explore more when I retire.
Now comes another part - the bladesmith part. Damascus steel is made by interweaving a lot of different steels and forge welding them together. Think of it like a Sandwich - with many layers. Some of these layers are high carbon steel, some are high nickel and so on. These have to be heated to the right temperature (probably found by trial and error). I will not bore you with details on crystal growth and forge welding - it is very much a science and an art. People struggle to make even something close to it even with modern method of propane heating, temperature control, electric arc welding etc.
Take a look for yourself
Modern “Damascus” pattern-welded steel isn’t actually the same technique as Wootz steel, where the pattern is inherent to crystal growth in a single eutectic melt, rather than forge-welding of separate layers of different composition.
This is complicated by Wootz steel often then being used at one of the layers in a pattern-welded piece, but my understanding is that Wootz would still display patterning if forged into a blade just by itself.
Agreed - and on the same page. Just wanted to point out to @Chronos that it was not just a matter of a better iron ore.
OK, then, let me rephrase: Even if you took a full set of master Damascus craftsmen, including the miners, smelters, smiths, and whoever else was necessary, and gave them ore from elsewhere, they couldn’t make Damascus blades.
And wasn’t there a story a couple of decades ago about a modern smith who analyzed surviving Damascus blades and reproduced the composition? IIRC, the key ingredient was a trace amount of vanadium.
Disney+ has a National Geographic documentary called Ultimate Viking Sword, in which their bladesmith demonstrates a method for making crucible steel that produces something similar to, if not the same as, Wootz steel, and forges it into a reproduction +ULFBERH+T sword. No pattern-welding is used, and it ends up with a speckled surface.
But, Viking swords have nothing to do with Chinese innovation. Getting back on track, I want to know how the Chinese (and a few other cultures?) apparently produced items made of aluminum/aluminium before the current method(s) for refining it were discovered. The now-disappeared “Nanjing Belt” was a (4th century?) artifact found in 1952 that was allegedly made of an 85% aluminum alloy. Is there a lost Chinese method for refining aluminum from bauxite or was it a hoax? It was aliens!
About viking swords, dont forget that the vikings had an exstensive trade witht the middle east, so any sword showing traces of eastern technique, could very well have been a trade item. Same with coins found in scandinavian viking digs. Some were exotic coins that supposedly proved that those people were visiting Norway. Its not so simple really, the Norse vikings travelled to the middle east and far into russia. So the coins could very well have came from trading with asians, which in turn had traded with the far east asia.
Ginger does not have that much Vit C, and the knowledge of cure/prevention of Scurvy has come and gone quite a bit. Not to mention, with the exception of about three decades, the Ancient Chinese were not long range seafarers to any great degree.
The Chinese did use the compass, or something very much like one, for like 500 years before anyone else- but as a tool for divination. For navigation, the race is very close, hard to tell who is the winner, Chinese kept better records, their record show 1117 AD, Euro records show 1190. I think that would be a tie.
Has anyone mentioned paper money?
Not to mention, the civil service exam - a process for co-opting the best and brightest to serve the empire.