
What if we called it the Flax Age instead of the Iron Age? - raldi
https://lithub.com/what-if-we-called-it-the-flax-age-instead-of-the-iron-age/
======
Nasrudith
While textiles are a twice neglected area due to decay and some cultural
biases the flax age wouldn't be remotely the right naming convention. The
invention age naming convention would imply when they /first used it
widespread/. So a few meteoric iron artifacts in the Bronze Age wouldn't make
it Iron Age but iron becoming commonplace in tools and weapons would.
Similarly if we kept up metalic conventions medieval aluminium wouldn't count
but 19th century when they started enmasse refining could be an "Aluminium
Age" if not for the fact we know enough from records that it would be
redundant.

Calling it the Flax Age would be like calling Prebellum Southern US "the
cotton age" \- it was used already for thousand of years in several prior
ages!

We probably can't trace it that precisely from lack of evidence but a Flax Age
would probably be among the Neolithic ages and certainly not the Iron Age.

~~~
zebrafish
The ages are named for the technology that made the most significant
difference in history. Not because the archeologists are male, but because you
can do things with iron that you cannot do with stone or wood or bone.

I will grant that textiles are probably not given enough attention, but an
army covered in flax clothes with wooden spears stands no chance against an
army equipped with iron equipment.

~~~
gshdg
But why is the leading _military_ technology the only thing we care about when
defining an age?

~~~
garmaine
Because Bronze Age cultures wiped out Stone Age cultures, and Iron Age
cultures wiped out Bronze Age cultures.

These transition periods are marked by civilization collapse and literally
centuries of warfare, with a radically different society at the end (different
beliefs, different agricultural, different ruling structure). Naming the
period after the military technology development that directly instigated such
crisis and reform seems relevant.

~~~
SamBam
But that's not correct, though, and is exactly the kinds of misunderstandings
you might expect people to have if they interpret the ages in simplistic,
metallurgic = weapons way.

Bronze age cultures did not "wipe out" stone age cultures with their new,
fancy bronze weapons. First of all, bronze weapons weren't even a defining
feature of the early bronze age, swords not appearing for a good 1500 years,
and spear tips being a fairly minor part of what was being developed in
bronze. Second, the description seems to imply a period of stone-age cultures
sitting around with bad weapons, getting attacked by other cultures who had
invented bronze. Rather, those same "stone age" cultures were gradually
incorporating bronze-making into their culture.

The bronze age ended with more of a "collapse," but that was due to a huge
number of factors, not simply some new culture having invented iron and
jumping out from behind some unexplored region of the map, Age of Empires-
style.

~~~
garmaine
It depends on where you are talking about. But in Europe, particularly western
Europe and especially the British isles, whose prehistory I know better, what
I described was accurate.

The Neolithic culture that had lived for thousands of years was displaced by
the Bronze Age "Beaker" culture that were an invading culture from mainland
Europe. Recent genetic studies show that there wasn't many connecting lineages
between Neolithic and Bronze age cultures--the genetic contribution of
previous occupants was less than 10% compared to the invading population.

For the Iron Age transition, we have more variety of evidence since it
happened thousands of years closer to the present. There was a period of 200
years of conflict known as the "Bronze crisis" after the introduction of iron
working. This is due, in part, to the devastating economic effect of moving
off of bronze axes as a currency, and the destabilizing effect iron weapons
have due to their durability and ease of maintenance--it makes long-distance
raiding a realistic proposition. This is an era that people retreated from
open communities into hill forts, populations declined, harvests failed, and
we have evidence of so many settlements burned to the ground. The people were
not wholesale displaced as happened in end of the Bronze age, but there was a
total breakdown of society and reformation into a very, very different
culture.

~~~
SamBam
I am not a historian, only a reader, so my knowledge has plenty of
inaccuracies. However, I believe what you are saying for the Neolithic ->
Bronze Age transition makes sense in the British Isles and Western Europe, as
these are the last remnants of Neolithic society in Europe.

The Bronze Age doesn't begin in Britain until about 2500-2000 BCE. Thats a
full thousand years after the Bronze Age had already begun in the Near East
and Egypt. So this displacement from more modern (and militarily advanced)
cultures makes sense.

The gradual adaptation of bronze that I was referring to was referring to the
origins of the Bronze Age in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and Greece.

------
Merrill
On a site called Literary Hub, they should recognize that the best reason for
a "Flax Age" is the production of linen paper beginning about 1350 CE.

Previously, parchment made expensively and laboriously from animal hides was
the medium for the written word in Europe. However, a cheaper medium was
needed for less important documents, and "rag paper" made from old linen
clothes began to be produced in greater volumes in the mid-14th Century. As
volumes increased it became much cheaper than parchment. As a result,
Gutenberg's invention of movable type was economically advantageous and the
literary explosion in Europe resulted. Had parchment still been the only
medium available, the cost of books would have been very expensive, whether
produced by scribe or printing press.

~~~
saalweachter
... 1350 CE in Europe; it was in common usage in the Islamic world centuries
earlier, and a millennium earlier in China.

~~~
zebrafish
The paper isn't the point, the press is. As is evidenced by your dates, linen
paper in and of itself does not move the needle much. Asia Minor and China
never produced a press. The idea of cheap, disposable paper that leads someone
to think up a mass production scheme moves the needle a lot.

~~~
saalweachter
The argument put forth in "Paper: Paging Through History" is actually the
opposite. Europe was exposed to cheap, disposable paper through trade for
_centuries_ but scorned it until they had a need for it.

(While "Paper" is partially a history book, it also has as a thesis that
societal change leads to technological change, rather than the opposite, and
attempts to demonstrate it through the history of paper.)

~~~
zebrafish
I'm interested in reading this. I think I disagree with the main thesis
though.

The most important forces in history are geography, demographics, and
information flow, probably in that order.

I would propose that the history of the west largely hinges on the printing
press. Gutenberg doesn't invent the press, Luther never gets the word out
about Reformation, Enlightenment never occurs, John Smith never writes Wealth
of Nations, America never splits from Britain, etc.

~~~
CydeWeys
If Gutenberg didn't invent the press, someone else would have soon after, and
history would have played out essentially the same.

We ascribe too much meaning to exactly which person invented something first,
as if it never would have happened absent that one person.

------
janpot
> This implies that metal objects were the principal features of these times,
> when they are simply often the most visible and long-lasting remnants.

I'm not an archeologist so I probably lack a lot of context, but I assume
metal requires more advanced technology to acquire. It seems kind of logical
to me to name a period after its most advanced technology.

~~~
jcranmer
How do you define "advanced"? It's not always clear.

For example, bronze metallurgy is easier to achieve (it requires lower
temperatures) than iron metallurgy. But bronze is, for many use cases, a
superior technology to iron. So is iron or bronze "more advanced technology"?

It's also easy to underestimate the difficulty in mundane technologies. Take
bread for instance; this is how you make bread: Grow a grass (cereal crop).
Separate the seeds, dry them, and then shell them to get your grains. Now
grind it into flour, and then mix it with water, fat, and salt. Let it sit out
to grow a yeast infection. Stick it in a fire, and then you get bread.

Compare this to typical metalworking: Find the appropriate ore. Stick it in a
fire. Depending on the metal, let it melt completely and pour it into a sand
cast, or get it red-hot and then bang on it with a hammer.

The popular conception of technology often hews towards a Civilization-style
technology tree model, but the consensus of historians and anthropologists in
modern times is that this model is quite far from the truth, and that trying
to impose that model on what we know of history unnecessarily limits our
understanding.

~~~
whatshisface
> _So is iron or bronze "more advanced technology"?_

Iron. Advancement doesn't mean "overall quality," it means difficulty and
sophistication, including the sophistication and difficulty of the necessary
supply chain. A computer is a more advanced technology than a shovel, even
though if you need to dig a hole the computer would be useless. That's the
definition of advanced.

Bronze is not easy to make, but iron is more difficult, requiring better
furnaces. Given access to the right raw materials, any civilization that can
make iron can make bronze but not the other way around.

> _Find the appropriate ore. Stick it in a fire._

Open fires aren't hot enough to melt any but the softest metals, like tin.
Building fires required to reach metallurgical temperatures is a very
difficult task whose know-how evolved slowly over millennia.

~~~
ummonk
Getting access to tin is hard. And making wrought iron isn't really harder to
do than making cast bronze. The issue is that if you don't know how to turn it
into steel (which isn't hard, just requires discovery), wrought iron is highly
inferior to bronze.

India actually basically skipped a bronze age, going largely from unalloyed
copper straight to steel rather early, without any intervening period where
bronze was widespread. So the bronze first then iron developmental pattern is
not universal.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>wrought iron is highly inferior to bronze.

What?

Wrought iron is immensely more useful than bronze in many applications
demanding strength (per weight or per volume, take your pick) and/or
toughness.

There's a reason things like metal bridges, railways, etc. all became common
only after wrought iron became readily available.

Likewise for cast iron, other than malleability it is mechanically superior to
bronze.

There's a reason the only time you see bronze these days is bushing material
and applications demanding corrosion resistance for which aluminum/zinc alloys
would be unsuitable.

~~~
ummonk
To clarify, I meant superior for contemporary needs. People weren’t building
large scale structures out of metal, but they were crafting tools, weaponry,
and armor, for which wrought iron’s softness is a dealbreaker.

------
bovermyer
As someone who is writing a tool that procedurally generates random textile
and clothing styles for fantasy cultures, this article is extremely useful to
me.

~~~
contingencies
Cool. You could probably generate real clothing patterns, too, and have some
robotic textile fabricators execute them. Have you seen the _Mount & Blade:
Bannerlord_ updates on clothing?
[https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/61](https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/61)
[https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/84](https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/84)

~~~
bovermyer
Not yet, but I'll check them out now! Thanks for sharing.

------
marcoseliziario
Metals are far more important because metals provide better tools and weapons.

Better fibers give more comfort, better resistance to the elements. But, in
itself, is not as much transformative as better tools and weapons.

If you went back to the distant past with modern clothes, you'd have some
marginal survival advantages, but not enough for your tribe if you needed to
fight for scarce resources like food.

So yes, Iron is far more relevant than flax. Because Iron gave better tools,
and our history is basically the history of our tools (and weapons)

------
Cthulhu_
Looking at Primitive Technology, I'd call all of those eras the Clay Age - he
uses clay for pretty much everything, including (of course) trying to melt
iron from mud.

~~~
ncmncm
Fair bit of wood, besides.

~~~
narrator
There is one primitive tech guy who actually got iron smelting working enough
to make a useable knife[1]. This naturally took him an enormous amount of work
and patience.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXniZZly4oA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXniZZly4oA)

------
Cyberdog
> Intriguingly, a 2013 discovery in southeast France has led to tentative
> suggestions that Homo sapiens may not have been the first species to have
> made string. A tiny sliver of twisted fibers—just 0.028 inches long—was
> found in a site occupied by Neanderthals 90,000 years ago, well before
> sapiens arrived in Europe.

Is "0.028 inches" a typo here? How would anyone find a thread that short, and,
if found, how could one tell that the thread was intentionally woven instead
of just fibers lying next to each other and getting twisted together by random
chance?

~~~
Swenrekcah
Seriously, that’s only 0.7 mm. It could be the diameter?

~~~
morelisp
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02773...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379113003788)
is apparently the relevant paper.

The fiber was some remnants found on stone tools, apparently. I don't have the
archaeological background to say if the claim it's not possible to twist in
nature in plausible or not.

------
b0rsuk
Another activity not given enough attention is fishing. Remnants of fish, as
well as fishing tools are perishable, but they played an important role before
the neolithic revolution. The name seems to be misleading.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190115200036.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190115200036.htm)

------
ncmncm
It mentions Dzudzuana three times, but does not explain it. Presumably that is
explained elsewhere in the book, but it is used inconsistently, thus
confusingly, here.

------
amelius
I'm wondering: did they eat a lot of flaxseed in that period? I'm asking
because I like flaxseed, and there seems to be a limit on how much the body
(my body) can handle of it.

------
luxuryballs
Welp, guess who is going to fire up Civ 5 tonight? This guy.

------
dekhn
Linseed (flax) and using limestone are both technologies that are
underappreciated.

~~~
cardiffspaceman
While beer/mead/ale making is noted in descriptions of cultures, it seems like
it would be a fun deep dive for teaching history to teenagers.

------
DiogenesKynikos
It's always annoying to see identity politics injected into hard sciences:

> Archaeologists—predominantly male—gave ancient ages names like “Iron” and
> “Bronze,” rather than “Pottery” or “Flax.”

Entire cultures are named after their pottery. For example, there are the
"corded ware culture" and "bell beaker culture." Archaeologists pay very close
attention to material culture (including more feminine items like jewelry).
Maybe - just maybe - it's harder to know about fabrics than metals because the
former degrade more quickly than the latter. Or we could just blame it on men.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_culture)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Beaker_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Beaker_culture)

~~~
klyrs
I know a few female archaeologists. They've uniformly experienced sexism,
ridicule, scorn, and harassment for being women. The hard sciences are
_steeped_ in identity politics, and have been as long as there have been hard
sciences. God forbid somebody actually talk about the assumptions and biases
that result.

~~~
zozbot234
Archaeology is not usually considered part of the "hard" sciences - depending
on whom you ask, it's either among the "soft" or the "social" sciences.

~~~
klyrs
Won't debate you on that. I'm a mathematician. IMNSHO, physics is a soft
science because they accept 5-sigma experimental results as "proof."

My parent made the claim that "identity politics" are invading archaeology,
and my point is that "identity politics" have always been there -- it's no
longer acceptable to explicitly forbid women from the sciences, but that
doesn't mean that implicit gatekeeping isn't happening.

~~~
cdirkx
But then do you consider mathematics a science?

~~~
klyrs
I do! Mostly. It's a little complicated. Read the Mathematics page on
wikipedia, and you'll find I'm in good company.

My strong, loosely held, opinion is that rigorous mathematics is the hardest
of sciences. Where mathematicians reject computer proofs over all-human
proofs, I balk at their lack of rigor and consider their stance unscientific.

Mathematics is one of the only sciences that finds absolute ground truth: we
state axioms, and elaborate proofs based entirely upon those axioms. Axioms
are assumptions, and we freely acknowledge that results are only guaranteed to
hold if the axioms are satisfied. Logicians are seen as philosophers, but I
hold them as equals.

There's a perspective that "science" deals purely with the natural world, and
mathematicians aren't bothered by the surreality of their axioms. The way I
see it is, these are truths that can extend beyond even our universe, should
anything more exist. And occasionally, pure mathematical results come hundreds
of years before natural observations require them -- what looks absurdly
inapplicable now might not in a few generations.

~~~
cdirkx
I agree for the most part, as I'm somewhat of a mathematician myself
(theoretical computer science).

However, you state "mathematics is one of the only sciences that finds
absolute ground truth", which I would argue sets it apart from being a
science: science does not deal with absolute truth. The scientific method and
experiments allows you to inductively make more and more accurate predictions
about the object of your study (most often the natural world), but it will
never give the deductive truth like math.

So rather than classifying almost all sciences as lacking rigor, I myself
consider math to simply be not a science, but something else, as implied with
my question.

I guess it depends on ones definition of "science". Is any process resulting
in knowledge a science, or does it have to involve the scientific method,
hypotheses, experiments.

~~~
klyrs
> I agree for the most part, as I'm somewhat of a mathematician myself
> (theoretical computer science).

Haha, see? You can call yourself a scientist and nobody will bat an eye!
Computer Science was once a branch of mathematics; and now it's a full-fledged
field. But as you note, the pure-math roots still shine brightly. I'm somewhat
of a computer scientist myself; I peddle in algorithms, graph theory, and more
generally discrete math. Which brings me to a point I forgot to make:
fundamentally, I'm an experimentalist. Not all mathematicians are.

> However, you state "mathematics is one of the only sciences that finds
> absolute ground truth", which I would argue sets it apart from being a
> science: science does not deal with absolute truth.

Happy to live with this disagreement, but not all mathematicians find ground
truths. For example, there's a significant industry on "conditional proofs" in
number theory -- they assume that the Riemann Hypothesis, or even the
Generalized Riemann Hypothesis, is true, and discover results based on that.
Others work on the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. They collect
evidence, and report on it; similar to the 5-sigma proofs I derided earlier --
the distinction is that they only call things proofs when they're actual
proofs.

In our shared world, there is the question of P vs NP. We've got a hypothesis
(I tend to believe that NP won't be constructively equal to P; but I wouldn't
be terribly surprised by a nonconstructive proof). Folks devote their lives to
examining this dichotomy: given a problem class, resolve it into P or NP -- I
call that an experiment!

I claim that endeavors like the above are actually following the scientific
method. Only we use somewhat different language. I've seen snobbery on both
sides^ -- scientists and mathematicians are happy to build and maintain a
fence. And I find that sad.

^and, oops, I did that with my 5-sigma dismissal

------
Spooky23
Textiles are incredibly important, but the age is defined by conflict.

End of the day, you can make the finest cloth, but if you're armed with bronze
weapons, whomever comes in with iron weapons and armor are going to kill you.

~~~
jbay808
Unless they freeze to death along the way.

