Bronze age Steampunk or, Delaying the discovery of Iron

I’m trying to create the history for a fantasy world. The basic idea is that a human society develops a steampunk age, which is destroyed by elves because humans haven’t discovered iron (which weakens magic). For this to happen, steampunk technology would have to be developed without the use of iron. I’m not going to be following the laws of physics to the letter, but could technology realistically develop along similar lines using bronze? Or possibly using another metal (and which one would it be)? To clarify, technology will still advance (it won’t be stuck at the bronze age), but it will develop from the bronze age without the discovery of iron.

Alternatively, iron is discovered, but its anti-magic properties aren’t realized until after the destruction of the steampunk age. This seems less plausible to me. If iron becomes as ubiquitous as it did in our world, and I think it would have to for a steampunk society to develop, someone would have noticed that iron and magic don’t mix. Maybe it needs to be treated in some way? Although I was trying to follow folklore “canon”, and I haven’t heard about that before. I have heard about meteoric iron, but I don’t think that it is common enough to turn the tide of a war.

Alternative to the alternative (or maybe an addendum to the alternative), iron is discovered and its anti-magic properties are known. The problem with this is that I don’t think elves would be able to become a “superpower” if magic can be easily disrupted by a common material. Also, the original reason I wanted to withhold iron is that, after the destruction of the steampunk age, man discovers iron to defend itself against a worse magical threat. I don’t think that this could happen if iron and its properties are already known about before the destruction.

Also, for whichever choice, what are some things that would be different because of that variable (and its various sub-variables)?

To handle the tolerances needed to make steam power practical you'll need to cast bronze and brass. However, the forge temperatures needed to cast copper alloys would also be enough to work iron. As such, having iron being unknown is irrational. So you can't claim iron wasn't at least considered

On the flip side, bronze was actually prized more than iron was at one point in time simply because good bronze was harder and stronger than pure iron. However, the tin needed to turn copper into bronze was always hard to find. To the best of my knowledge, the only mines for tin in the ancient world were all the way in Spain. So you'll need large and local supplies of tin and possibly zinc.

Iron also tends to rust a lot. Bronze will form a green layer of rust on the surface and no more. Iron will rust all the way through if you don't do anything. We see this in archeology with iron swords rusted into ragged shadows of their former selves while bronze swords still have an edge. Not a particularly sharp edge but nothing an hour with a whetstone can't fix. So corrosive forces work in Bronze's favor

Steel, however, turns everything on it's head. As a material. steel blows every other pre-industrial material out of the water and even stays competetive into the modern age. Steel rusts slowly and is so strong and the components, iron and carbon, are damned near everywhere. So steel can not be discovered

tl;dr You need 1st, Plentiful tin mines. 2nd, powerful corrosive forces 3rd, nobody considering iron for the above reasons long enough to discover steel.

edited 17th Oct '16 3:08:04 PM by Belisaurius

Actually bronze will just as readily corrode away as iron. It is more about conditions the artifact is kept in. Peat bogs have preserved a lot of things iron, bronze, and even human remains for example in amazing detail. Sealed tombs are another good source and many locations in the dry hot deserts have preserved a lot. There more then a few iron swords with details of scroll work and inscriptions on them that are fairly old but were well preserved because of where they were left and were made of iron. The Goujian the famous Chinese bronze sword was a surprise to the team who dug it up as the conditions in the tomb would have normally left similar artifacts badly damaged or corroded. Instead it was almost perfectly intact. It is attributed to the airtight seal around the blade provided by the lacquered wood sheath. So sometimes it is also partly luck.

Western Europe had something like four or five major tin sources and everyone else in Europe just imported from them. Northern Europe was rather Tin poor though as are the Americas, Africa, and Australia. Most of those locations have largely no tin sources or only one major source for tin.

You won't delay the discovery of iron as the metal was known pretty early on and rather plentiful but you could feasibly delay its adoption over bronze. Part of what helped spread the use of iron was trade of iron tools and goods as well as migrations of peoples who largely used iron instead of bronze. An example would be many of the tribes and groups that migrated south out of Northern Europe to what is now western Europe during the time of Rome. They extensively used copper and iron. That was because they lacked access to the tin to make bronze unlike the regions of Europe further south who had several major sources of tin fueling the European bronze age. They also lacked any sort of reliable trade route from which to acquire the tin or bronze. The long history way to change that is they have their own sources of tins and copper and meet other bronze age cultures after they migrate.

So the easy answer is make the raw materials for bronze a lot more common. To the point they are reasonably cheap enough to slow the switch to iron and steel.

As for steam punk why try and do away with iron? Iron, brass, bronze, and steel were used alongside each other in quantity during the era that inspired steam punk to begin with.

Copper alloys and their properties and advantages.

edited 20th Oct '16 6:22:06 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I don't think it's possible to have a Steampunk setting without iron. It might be possible for there to be a prototype steam engine (or two) in the world, but Steampunk implies an industrial revolution, which you simply can't have without heavy industry and mass-production, for which you need lots and lots of raw materials to build the machinery out of. Bronze and brass alone just ain't gonna cut it.