Nature's Evil

People dig metals from under the earth and harvest fibres that grow on its surface. In processing metals, we use chemical methods which change the inner quality of every individual piece; in processing fibres we use physical operations which do not transform the individual pieces but join them together. Extracting metal from ore requires very particular conditions that are difficult to create – for example very high temperatures; in contrast, processing fibres needs protracted manual labour. A textile can be unpicked to return it to its original fibres; once an alloy has been created it cannot be separated into its original elements. Unlike the processing of fibre, which was usually women’s sphere of activity, the mining of ore and the smelting of metals were predominantly men’s work. But the historical roles and prices of these two types of commodity changed in parallel ways. Rising over the centuries, from the eighteenth century onwards prices stabilised, lagging far behind the rocketing costs of food and energy. The history of metals is full of insights, delusions and accidental discoveries, passed on to posterity by those who undertook perilous adventures and survived to tell the tale. It was a natural selection of the strange ideas promoted by people who might not have been the fittest, but who undoubtedly had luck on their side – a Darwinian process lasting 8,000 years.

Bronze

Unlike water, grain or wood, metals are topical resources, and the trade in them is all about location. If you are able to extract a resource that you have, you need to trade it for another commodity that you do not have, and transport these things both ways. These questions simply don’t arise if you have the same grain, wood or apples that your neighbours also have. You might be doing well, but you have neither trade nor capital. And probably you do not have metals.

Metal ores occur randomly, without rhyme or reason, and very inconveniently for humankind. Ores are embedded in the depths of the earth; tectonic processes only rarely push ores up to the surface in folds in the earth’s crust. These folds are usually located in the mountains – uninhabited places far from sea routes, fertile lands and trading towns. So it happened that the sources of wealth – gold fields, silver mines and, later, deposits of copper or iron ore – were found in remote places. Or, conversely, just because these deposits were few and far between they turned into sources of great wealth. Compare metals with a resource that is distributed more widely – clay. The source of bricks and pottery, clay was a godsend for humanity; the firing of clay brought greater benefits to people than any other technology. But clay never became a cult object; an evenly dispersed resource benefits people without creating inequality and does not make fortunes. The potter’s technology was often superior to the blacksmith’s; many methods of processing metals borrowed their techniques and tools from the craft of working with clay. But only metals, with their miraculous transmutations, specialised uses and monopoly sources of supply, created a society based on knowledge, inequality and growth. The era of capital coincided with the age of metal.

The Bronze Age was preceded by the long period of human history when metal, prized for its glitter and scarcity, was an object of worship. Using stone tools, people shaped metal nuggets into ritual ornaments. The Bible tells the ancient story of the golden calf: when the people fell into despair, Aaron melted down thousands of personal ornaments to make a community idol. Then Moses, ‘a stranger in a strange land’, came down from the mountain; he destroyed the golden calf and taught the Jews to worship the invisible God. The religion of the Golden Calf lingered on in the worship of gold – the universal equivalent of money and abundance. But there was also the religion of the Golden Fleece – an anticipation of wonder and adventure. The people of the mountains found metals in their barren rocks, but the people of the valleys could also obtain them in exchange for grain, wool or ceramics. Thanks to the exchange of fibres for metals, people understood the expanses of the globe as a source of treasures and a place for discoveries.