# Bronze Age Preceded Iron Age? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 8, 2016, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093 "2016-11-08T19:15:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jinx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/1 "2016-11-08T19:15:30Z")
Never gave it much thought I recently heard how the Bronze Age preceded the Iron Age. My question is this: Iron comes straight out of the ground whereas bronze is an alloy. Seems to me the making of bronze is an advanced step requiring the knowledge to mix the two metals let alone form objects out of it. So, how could it be that the Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age? Seems to me one must learn to walk before one can run. Maybe the SD can clarify? ---
**Author:** ![Jinx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/2 "2016-11-08T19:17:33Z")
Granted, [this cite](https://kandjsteelworks.wikispaces.com/Why+did+the+Bronze+Age+occur+before+the+Iron+Age) explains some, but it implies bronze is an ore? Huh? "Tin and copper is easier to get out of its ore [than iron]…but why would one think to mix them? Was there a tin age and a copper age before the Bronze Age? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/3 "2016-11-08T19:20:10Z")
> [@Jinx](#): > > Never gave it much thought I recently heard how the Bronze Age preceded the Iron Age. My question is this: Iron comes straight out of the ground whereas bronze is an alloy. Seems to me the making of bronze is an advanced step know to mix the two metals let alone form objects out of it. So, how could it be that the Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age? Seems to me one must learn to walk before one can run. Maybe the SD can clarify? Because iron was more difficult to work and needed higher temperatures to work it in the ancient world. Bronze was easier to work, and thus much more widely in use for everything from tools to weapons and armor long before it was technologically possible to do the same things with iron. Also, early iron was brittle and less suited to battle or craft until they worked out how to work it properly. So, Q.E.D. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/4 "2016-11-08T19:23:22Z")
Sorry, it’s GQ…[here](http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=bba) is a cite for ancient metalurgy: > [@](#): > > The age of copper: from 7000 BC > > From about 7000 BC a few neolithic communities begin hammering copper into crude knives and sickles, which work as well as their stone equivalents and last far longer. Some of the earliest implements of this kind have been found in eastern Anatolia. > > This intermediate period between the Stone Age (when all weapons and tools are of flint) and the first confident metal technology (the Bronze Age) has been given a name deriving from the somewhat awkward combination of materials. It is called the Chalcolithic Period, from the Greek chalcos ‘copper’ and lithos ‘stone’. > > An accident, probably frequent, reveals another of nature’s useful secrets. A nugget of pure copper, or perhaps a finished copper tool, falls into the hot camp fire. The copper melts. When it cools, it is found to have solidified in a new shape. > > And the magic of fire has yet more to offer. Certain kinds of bright blue or green stones are attractive enough to collect for their own sake. It turns out that when such stones are heated to a high temperature, liquid metal flows from them. They are azurite and malachite, two of the ores of copper. > > The use of fire thus makes possible two significant new steps in the development of metallurgy: the casting of metal, by pouring it into prepared moulds; and the smelting of mineral ores to extract metal. Objects made from smelted copper, from as early as 3800 BC, are known in Iran. > > Many mineral ores are found on the surface of the earth, in outcrops of rock. Chipping away at them, to pursue the metal-bearing lode down below the surface, leads inevitably to another technological advance - the development of mining. > [@](#): > > The age of bronze: from 2800 BC > > Sometimes the ores of copper and tin are found together, and the casting of metal from such natural alloys may have provided the accident for the next step forward in metallurgy. It is discovered that these two metals, cast as one substance, are harder than either metal on its own. > > The cast alloy of copper and tin is bronze, a substance so useful to human beings that an entire period of early civilization has become known as the Bronze Age. A bronze blade will take a sharper edge than copper and will hold it longer. And bronze ornaments and vessels can be cast for a wide variety of purposes. > > The technology of bronze is first developed in the Middle East. Bronze is in use in Sumer, at Ur, in around 2800 BC, and in Anatolia shortly afterwards. It then spreads spasmodically. It appears in the Indus valley in about 2500 BC, and progresses westwards through Europe from about 2000. At much the same time it is found in crude form in China, where it later achieves an unprecedented level of sophistication. From about 1500 BC the Shang dynasty produces bronze objects of exceptional brilliance. > > In all these regions it is the rulers who use bronze, as a luxury for themselves or as a weapon for their armies. For ordinary people the Stone Age survives well into the Bronze Age. > [@](#): > > The age of iron: from 1500 BC > > The next great development in metallurgy involves a metal which is the most abundant in the earth’s surface but which is much more difficult to work than copper or tin. It is iron, with a melting point too high for primitive furnaces to extract it in pure form from its ore. The best that can be achieved is a cluster of globules of iron mixed with sludgy impurities. This unpromising substance can be turned into a useful metal by repeated heating and hammering, until the impurities are literally forced out. > > A few iron objects dating from before 2000 BC have been found (beads, a ring, some blades), but it is not until about 1500 BC that the working of iron is done anywhere on a regular basis. > > The magic of iron: from 1500 BC > > The Hittites are the first people to work iron, in Anatolia from about 1500 BC. In its simple form iron is less hard than bronze, and therefore of less use as a weapon, but it seems to have had an immediate appeal - perhaps as the latest achievement of technology (with the mysterious quality of being changeable, through heating and hammering), or from a certain intrinsic magic (it is the metal in meteorites, which fall from the sky). > > Quite how much value is attached to iron can be judged from a famous letter of about 1250 BC, written by a Hittite king to accompany an iron dagger-blade which he is sending to a fellow monarch (see Letter from a Hittite king). ---
**Author:** ![ticker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@ticker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ticker)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/5 "2016-11-08T19:25:32Z")
The Bronze Age was preceded by the Copper Age. Since bronze is copper plus tin it is not so hard to see how they made that technological jump. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/6 "2016-11-08T19:54:50Z")
> [@Jinx](#): > > Never gave it much thought I recently heard how the Bronze Age preceded the Iron Age. My question is this: Iron comes straight out of the ground whereas bronze is an alloy. Seems to me the making of bronze is an advanced step requiring the knowledge to mix the two metals let alone form objects out of it. So, how could it be that the Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age? Seems to me one must learn to walk before one can run. Maybe the SD can clarify? If you got iron straight out of the ground then someone buried it there. If it’s there naturally, it’s [iron ore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore) and there’s a good deal of work to be done to turn iron ore into iron. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/7 "2016-11-08T20:19:01Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > If you got iron straight out of the ground then someone buried it there. If it’s there naturally, it’s [iron ore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore) and there’s a good deal of work to be done to turn iron ore into iron. Unless it is [an iron meteorite.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoric_iron#Cultural_and_historical_usage) As an example, over the past couple of decades, tens of thousands of meteorite fragments (which were able to remain reasonably intact and accumulate over multiple thousands of years because of the dry conditions) have been collected from the Sahara desert–but the percentage of them that are stony verses iron is much higher than the overall ratio in finds/falls. The most likely reason for that disparity is that the iron meteorites have been collected as soon as they were seen to work into tools, likely long before iron ores were mined and processed in the iron age. ---
**Author:** ![Duke\_of\_Rat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Duke\_of\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke_of_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/8 "2016-11-08T20:20:52Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > If you got iron straight out of the ground then someone buried it there. If it’s there naturally, it’s [iron ore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore) and there’s a good deal of work to be done to turn iron ore into iron. Or you found an iron meteorite. Damn iron meteorite ninjas! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/9 "2016-11-08T20:22:40Z")
On the other hand, copper sometimes _does_ come straight out of the ground. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/10 "2016-11-08T20:40:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > On the other hand, copper sometimes _does_ come straight out of the ground. And iron comes straight out of the sky, what’s your point? 😉 So basically man made fire and at one point noticed that stuff melted when thrown in and that it could be shaped. Then they just started throwing other rocks into the fire along with it and 4200 years later had bronze. Then got serious and started making better fires and then we had iron. The things people do when they get bored. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/11 "2016-11-08T20:44:06Z")
A lot of people don’t realize aluminum used to be incredibly valuable - it was considered far more valuable than gold. Because while aluminum is a common element, it’s almost always found in compounds and it was incredibly difficult to separate out the aluminum from those compounds. It wasn’t until we could generate electricity that it became possible to refine aluminum cheaply and its price collapsed. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/12 "2016-11-08T20:52:46Z")
I don’t know if this is correct, but I remember reading somewhere that before steel came along, bronze was the superior choice for weaponry compared to iron. Iron’s advantage that caused it to supplant bronze was that there was so much more of it available once you knew how to get it out of the ore. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/13 "2016-11-08T21:12:03Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > On the other hand, copper sometimes _does_ come straight out of the ground. > [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > And iron comes straight out of the sky, what’s your point? 😉 … [snip] Meteoric iron is _very_ rare … whereas in a few places reduced copper is not-near-as-rare … one specific place is the Great Lakes region of North America … ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/14 "2016-11-08T21:28:12Z")
Many people don’t realize how beautiful polished bronze is. Prettier then gold, IMO. Even in small items it has decorative value, unlike iron. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/15 "2016-11-08T21:28:33Z")
Many fine answers have already been posted. I’ll just add that arsenical bronze (with low or very low tin content) was in use for many centuries before tin bronze caught on and “Bronze Age” includes many civilizations whose metal had very low tin content. Although some early bronze had tin serendipitiously, and ancient metal workers may have been aware of its good properties, due to scarcity the transition from arsenic to tin bronze didn’t happen until about 2150 BC in Harrapa, Ur and Egypt. Both tin and arsenic are useful in the alloy (ask the experts); arsenic has the disadvantage that it poisoned the metal workers. The big event was the discovery of rich tin mines in Cornwall about 2150 BC. [QUOTE=Wikipedia] It has been claimed that tin was first mined in Europe around 2500 BCE in Erzgebirge, and knowledge of tin bronze and tin extraction techniques spread from there to Brittany and Cornwall around 2000 BCE and from northwestern Europe to northwestern Spain and Portugal around the same time (Penhallurick 1986, p. 93). _**However, the only Bronze Age object from Central Europe whose tin has been scientifically provenanced is the Nebra sky disk, and its tin (and gold, though not its copper), is shown by tin isotopes to have come from Cornwall.**_ [/QUOTE] Whether the tin mines played a key role or not, Y-chromosome studies show a huge expansion of a royal caste (R1b-L21) and sibling castes like R1b-DF27 and R1b-U152 which, originating near the Atlantic seaboard, amplified dramatically coincident with the spread of (largely Cornwall-derived) tin bronze. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/16 "2016-11-08T21:31:26Z")
> [@glowacks](#): > > I don’t know if this is correct, but I remember reading somewhere that before steel came along, bronze was the superior choice for weaponry compared to iron. Iron’s advantage that caused it to supplant bronze was that there was so much more of it available once you knew how to get it out of the ore. Bronze was favored for some things a LONG time after steel came around. In the renaissance, during sieges of cities artillery men would cast their siege artillery on the spot. When it came time to leave for the next siege, they’d smash the cannons into pieces and load them onto carts for travel. When they got to the next site, they’d melt down the pieces and recast the cannons all over again. No way to do that with iron cannons since, at that time, they had to be welded together from many different iron rods. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/17 "2016-11-08T21:45:01Z")
Clearly you never played Civilization, or you would have known that bronze working is a prereq for iron working. Geez, what are we teaching in school these days? ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/18 "2016-11-08T21:50:11Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Meteoric iron is _very_ rare … whereas in a few places reduced copper is not-near-as-rare … one specific place is the Great Lakes region of North America … Rocks falling from the sky rare? Yes, unless one falls on you. Maybe I was just being iron_ **ic** _. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/19 "2016-11-08T22:58:24Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Unless it is [an iron meteorite.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoric_iron#Cultural_and_historical_usage) > > As an example, over the past couple of decades, tens of thousands of meteorite fragments (which were able to remain reasonably intact and accumulate over multiple thousands of years because of the dry conditions) have been collected from the Sahara desert–but the percentage of them that are stony verses iron is much higher than the overall ratio in finds/falls. The most likely reason for that disparity is that the iron meteorites have been collected as soon as they were seen to work into tools, likely long before iron ores were mined and processed in the iron age. > [@Duke\_of\_Rat](#): > > Or you found an iron meteorite. > > Damn iron meteorite ninjas! 😉 Ignorance fought. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093/20 "2016-11-08T23:20:25Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > Ignorance fought. Thanks. To learn more about meteorites from the Sahara, google NWA meteorites or North-west Africa meteorites. You’ll find large numbers of hits. (Meteorites are named after the area where they fall–but with thousands of them being collected from undetermined spots in the desert, they have little chance but to number them.) One of the few iron meteorites found in the Sahara is [NWA 859](https://www.google.com/#q=nwa+859+taza) (which also happens to be one with a name, Taza.) Less than 100 KG of Taza fragments have been covered. Many tons of stony meteorites have. Statistically speaking, there should be much more iron, if all types had been left equally alone. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-preceded-iron-age/771093.md?page=2)