Our modern world would not exist without them. They have such an unimaginable impact on our day-to-day lives, but the vast majority of folk have no inkling on how these six crucial materials have changed the face of society today.
From the earliest antiquity, when sand was mined to produce glass to the modern age where it is used to produce the very microchips at the heart of every electronic convenience around us, sand, and silicon, has always been a crucial resource. Now, this is at the centre of geopolitics, as the have-nots of the world scramble to acquire the finest silicon and the haves stop at nothing to prevent them from getting it.
Salt is a component of our diet, and is absolutely essential to function. Despite its abundance in the ocean water, it is actually rather expensive to extract and purify salt from ocean water. The purest salts are actually mined, and this mined salt has been controlled and taxed from antiquity across the world from China to Rome. The world “salary” literally originates in salt, as soldiers were paid in salt. Controlling and taxing salt has been a historical source of much contention between the state and its people.
Iron is so important a mineral that the process of extracting it was a watershed moment of human history. There was the before and after; and the after was quite appropriately named the Iron Age. Copper is equally critical, and the two metals are used extensively from construction and manufacturing to electronics.
Oil is the magic material which underpines the energy security of the human race. Moreover, it also supplies us with a host of other materials which we take for granted, the most significant of them being plastics. Lithium is the backbone of the energy storage infrastructure, powering everything from mobile phones to electric cars.
Conway explores the history and impact of each of these materials and how dependent humanity has become to these materials, while at the same time being ready to safeguard their interests to the extent of going to war over them.
An excellent eye-opening read. I highly recommend you pick it up now.