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[clhw AT InfoAve.Net (clhw)]

The metal worker recorded in Genesis, was quite a long time before Columbus.
Something like 2000 years?
The American natives were still knapping flints in 1492 and for years
afterward...perhaps as late as the mid-1800s.

>> When someone first learned to work metal that technology
>> put the flint knappers out of business, metal tools were just a first step.
>>
>
>A skilled flint knapper made a leaf point in about an hour.  I saw this
>demonstrated once.  In a great many areas flint (or chert, or obsidian,
>etc) is
>quite common.
>
>When 'technology' went to working metal, and especially ferrous metals, a
>smithy could not make an implement in an hour.  It took making charcoal,
>obtaining ore (most often from bog ore), smelting, refining, and then
>working the
>metal to temper it.  It took a great deal of resources (trees) to do this.  
>It
>wasn't just a matter of "now we're smarter with this technology", it was a
>willingness to depend on a very labor and resource intensive process.
>
>Thus metal was scarce and expensive.  Until the industrial revolution, metal
>was only used (by the common folk) when absolutely necessary.  The ancient
>Egyptians had metal and eventually iron but still tipped their arrows with
>flint.
> Shovels, rakes, and all such implements were made entirely of wood until
>relatively recent times.