Hi Jeroen

I would have to agree with your comments above. The complexity of iron production in the east and the west make brief descriptions difficult. Add on to this the factors you stated and its much better to delve deeply from several sources before forming distinct opnions of how and when it was done a certain way.

I am currently waiting for the text detailed below to arrive at our local University as I think it should be quite interesting.

Best
Craig




The latest volume of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in
China has now appeared: Volume 5, Part 11, Ferrous Metallurgy, by
Donald B. Wagner.

The publisher's blurb is here:
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue....0521875660

and I have placed a copy of the Table of Contents and introductory matter here:
http://www.staff.hum.ku.dk/dbwagner/SCC36c-prelims.pdf

--
Donald B Wagner
Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen
http://staff.hum.ku.dk/dbwagner

Craig-I don't know how I lost the URL, but I did.Also these are txt. files, not allowed here. I will try to e-mail,but I don't know if it will work.

Interesting. If only the Needham books weren't so many, large, and expensive. I'm already saving for the volumes on military technology, and I don't know how many years it's going to take for me to get enough money to collect just another volume, let alone all of them....

(Though, on the bright side, they'll all probably have been out and published by the time I'm rich enough to start collecting them in earnest.)