Ceramic While
pottery originated in many different points around the world, it is certain that it was brought to light mostly through the
Neolithic Revolution. That is important because it was a way for the first agrarians to store and carry a surplus of supplies. While most jars and pots were fire-clay
ceramics, Neolithic communities also created
kilns that were able to fire such materials to remove most of the
water to create very stable and hard materials. Without the presence of
clay on the riverbanks of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Fertile Crescent, such kilns would have been impossible for people in the region to have produced. Using these kilns, the process of
metallurgy was possible once the
Bronze and
Iron Ages came upon the people that lived there.
Metallic Many raw metallic materials used in industrial purposes must first be processed into a usable state. Metallic
ores are first
processed through a combination of crushing, roasting, magnetic separation, flotation, and leaching to make them suitable for use in a
foundry. Foundries then
smelt the ore into usable metal that may be
alloyed with other materials to improve certain properties. One metallic raw material that is commonly found across the world is
iron, and combined with
nickel, this material makes up over 35% of the material in the Earth's
inner and
outer core. The iron that was initially used as early as 4000 BC was called
meteoric iron and was found on the surface of the Earth. This type of
iron came from the meteorites that struck the Earth before humans appeared, and was in very limited supply. This type is unlike most of the iron in the Earth, as the iron in the
Earth was much deeper than the humans of that time period were able to excavate. The nickel content of the meteoric iron made it not necessary to be heated up, and instead, it was hammered and shaped into tools and weapons.
Iron ore , India|alt=Refer to caption Iron ore can be found in a multitude of forms and sources. The primary forms of iron ore today are
Hematite and
Magnetite. While iron ore can be found throughout the world, only the deposits in the order of millions of tonnes are processed for industrial purposes. The top five exporters of Iron ore are Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, and Ukraine. One of the first sources of iron ore is
bog iron. Bog iron takes the form of pea-sized nodules that are created under peat bogs at the base of mountains. == Conflicts of raw materials ==