Here is a traditional mythology in China, during the waring age(way way back into history in around 500BC)
It was said that a sword smith tried to forge a sword with this material he found, but had failed to melt it with the hottest forging fire he could get, so his wife cuts off some of her hair and finger nails (or even cast herself down into the flames in some version, which contradicts with later events where their son, at that time unborn taking revenge for them) and cast them into the fire, which makes the fire hotter and finally melts the metal.

The the smith and his wife's name: "Gan Jiang" and "Mo Ye" which is also the name of the two swords.

Cute myth, but body parts would not increase the temperature of the fire a whit.

And it wouldn't be necessary. Any steel alloy used by ancient smiths can easily be worked using the techniques available to them at the time.

[quote]Cute myth, but body parts would not increase the temperature of the fire a whit.

And it wouldn't be necessary. Any steel alloy used by ancient smiths can easily be worked using the techniques available to them at the time.[/quote]

Well, if it is so ancient (techinically swords found in those periods in the area is still made by bronze), maybe the forge is only using copper and the material is bronze, which copper got a much lower melting point and I guess the burning temperature of animal fat is a little higher than common wood, which could make quite some difference in those days.

I just think it would be fun to see them bust an ancient mythology though.

A quick glance at Wikipedia under "iron age" furnishes the following tidbit:
(copied from the article)

Main article: Iron Age China

Silla chest and neck armour from National Museum of Korea.
Silla chest and neck armour from National Museum of Korea.

In 1972, near the city of Gaocheng (藁城) in Shijiazhuang (now Hebei province), an iron-bladed bronze tomahawk (铁刃青铜钺) dating back to the 14th century BC was excavated. After a scientific examination, the iron was shown to be made from meteoric siderite. The Iron Age in East Asia began in earnest, however, when cast-iron objects appeared in Yangzi Valley toward the end of the 6th century BC.[16] The few objects were found at Changsha and Nanjing. According to the mortuary evidence suggests that the initial use of iron in Lingnan belongs to the mid to late Warring States period (from about 350 BC).

The techniques used in Lingnan is a combination of bivalve moulds of distinct southern tradition and the incorporation of piece mould technology from the Zhongyuan The products of the combination of these two periods are bells, vessels, weapons and ornaments and the sophisticated cast.

An Iron Age culture of the Tibetan Plateau has tentatively been associated with the Zhang Zhung culture described in early Tibetan writings.

As you can see, iron was well-known in China well before the 500 BC time-frame you mention in the myth.

Swords have a special place in the culture and traditions of many nations; they were often supposed to have supernatural properties and be capable of wonderful feats.
These things are merely myths, however.

The problem is that a famous sword that is found in that period is bronze. I don't think you can read Chinese sources, but I got plenty that points out a king in another country at the time within this Myth uses a bronze sword in real history.(In some version of the myth, the sword is casted for him as well, but the most popular version is casted for an opposing king that died on an invasion against this one.)

"越王勾踐劍" This is a real bronze sword(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Goujian) found and the owner 越王勾踐 died in BC465.

The myth is about forging a sword for 吳王闔閭, who died in BC496.
His son who died in BC47X got a spear that is also bronze: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear_of_Fuchai

Actually, if we stick with iron and steels for a minute, instead of the whole iron/bronze debate, there is a way for this to be actually true.

Until recent times, fire temperatures were not hot enough to melt pure iron. But inclusions of carbon in the iron (steel) lower the melting point. As you heat iron over charcoal, it takes in some carbon, and with enough carbon could be truly melted and cast.

So, for the sake of playing Devil's Advocate, if the fire/forge in question had a low carbon content to infuse into the warmed iron, throwing organic material into the fire, although not necessarily raising the fire's temperature, could plausibly add the missing carbon necessary to lower the steel's melting point to a point where melting and casting became possible.

That sounds reasonable. Some researchers argue that the swords are made of iron, but since most swords discovered are bronze, people tends to believe they ought to be also bronze swords.

So I think the swords' material is also a myth, this one is not for the MB though.

Look i have made replicas of ancient forges from many regions including a copy of a forge from southeast asia using bamboo tubes and rooster feathers for bellows, and the firepot was a simple hole in the ground lined with clay and ash, and for fuel i used Kiawe wood charcoal (mesquite for those not in hawaii)
and using this simple setup i was able to not only forge iron but melt my own steel from iron scraps, i didnt have any absolutely pure iron on hand but it easily melted everything i could throw at it.

I would assume a forge that old is only a pile of soil and wood, with no charcoal but flesh dry wood.

Or it is simply because too many people are blowing into the forge (according to the myth, 300 children) and that significantly cooled down the forge.

[quote]using this simple setup i was able to not only forge iron but melt my own steel from iron scraps, i didnt have any absolutely pure iron on hand but it easily melted everything i could throw at it.[/quote]


That's all well and good, but the fact remains that pure iron melts at 1535°C, while the mixture of iron and cementite melts at 1150°C. The 1535°C is out of the range of a primitive blown charcoal fire. You need the cementite to be able to do anything with the iron.

When an ancient smith was processing ore, they depended on the reaction:
3 Fe2O3 + 11 C --> 2 Fe3C + 9 CO
It needs large amounts of carbon. Smothering the ore in charcoal is a good source of carbon to form the cementite. Adding carbon to your fire, no matter what the source of the fire or of the carbon, can only help with the formation of cementite, and help speed the time from ore to a bloom to work with.

Let's return for a moment to the OP, which states the Chinese smith working circa 500 BC, had some sort of metal he "could not melt".

Then, with the addition of his wife's "bits", it magically becomes capable of being worked.

Obviously, adding body parts to a smith's forge is not going to raise the heat level materially.
Likewise, all metals known to our ancient smith readily melt or become workable in very simple primitive forges.
The WIKI article indicates that the Chinese had been using iron and steel both for a very long time prior to 500 BC.
So, there would be no metal available to primitive smiths that he could not work with the techniques well-known at the time.

It's obviously just a myth to add a supernatural "personal" element to the weapon the smith was making; much as in the Japanese tradition where the Samurai believed that fine swords contained their "soul".

Actually bike, the main Wiki article on the Iron Age (for what that's worth), has the Chinese using meteoric iron at first (like other cultures did).

They give the end of the 6th century BC (so that would be nearer the 600 end of the 600-501 range) as when iron first started being cast in China.

It's still plausible (I'm not saying guaranteed), that within 50-75 years of the technology emerging, that not all smiths in every region were clear on what was needed to get a bloom from iron ores. I'd think that if one smith knew the trick, he'd keep it to himself, and the others would be left to experiment, so that people would come to him for their iron castings.

Just sayin'...

I guess his teacher did not teach him everything or the way it was taught to him is not a scientific method.

It would be very likely that people at that time might not be able to stick to science and would think that they used mystical ways to produce something.

After that period, the alchemist in China went full fledged for the medicine of eternal life, and accidentally created gun powder. However, the method was kept written in ways that they think they need to have all the ceremonies to create that powder, or it will not work.

So it might be that even if a smith figured out how to work with iron, the method he used was still with lots of crap that we would know is irrelevant today.

Also, I would highly doubt that during the warring period, if one country found a way to work with iron, they would share it with other opposing countries that still uses bronze. Although it is fairly common for smiths to find jobs in other countries, they are unlikely to be the top smiths that know all the secret methods, or else they would have no problem finding a job in their own country. (The smith in question here did come from another country famous for smithing at that time)

Wonder if enough body parts are thrown in, will that give enough carbon content to the iron though. (They have 300 children's hair, finger nails and such at hand other than their own anyway)