This happening by accident is a lot easier than ‘accidentally’ discovering it, but underwater, with the many, many, extra steps required.
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Very. Very many. Very many much extra steps. (woops post filler)
Time to make you angry.
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Summary
This thread will be locked haha.
Ree. But yeah, the ‘no underwater civs, unless you want to do the thesis’ rule should definitely be applied a bit more
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Because they are good at thinking about ideas and things that aren’t yet real.
So you’re saying that a species will seal off a cave, drain it of water ,(which would take a looooong time without metals,) connect it to the air, build a smelter, make fire, (which they would just not discover in the first place underwater, since you’d have to be outside to discover it, and being outside the water without lungs does not fill me with ‘what would happen if I scraped sticks together?’,) and then, while awkwardly holding their breath throughout the entire process, toss some rocks in, purely because they’re smart and want to see what would happen?
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The species may learn about fire from less intelligent amphibious sapients, and they may not have to hold their breath, either if the smelter can work with only air from a tuyere, or if the creature breathes air, like cetaceans on earth.
Everyone here:
How to the fish forgee?
Did you guys even read my post?
I think this could work for metalworking underwater, caves with air pockets in them, kinda like this video but bigger
lemme know if this would work or not 
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Welcome to the forums! That is an interesting idea. (Make sure you are very careful with your underwater civilization suggestions, it is quite controversial)
Ok, metal can melt on air, but there appear many questions. First: who will fire? Second: who and how will forge metal? Third: how will these ventilate?
Caves have been suggested and discussed before. I can’t remember the exact arguments, but caves are similar to the idea that a species can just hold their breath and hang out on land to do smelting.
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underwater civ
not amphibious civ
Think.
or there could be a way to progress without smeltaling the metal.
you wont be able to progress that much without fire or metal
yes but there could be an alternative route.
we would not know it though.
How far could we go without metal? Think of stuff you use everyday. It more than likely has metal in it, interacts with metal, or was made with something made out of metal.
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but there could have been a different path that could substitute for smelting.
or maybe just carry them along enough until they can smelt.
Carry what along?
Also, as I said almost all of modern technology requires metal to be made, or function.
Also don’t forget electronics.
carry the species along.
they could scrape by on an alternative until they can discover smelting and then electronincs.