Iron Age: Shortages in Copper and Tin Lead to Iron and Steel
Spread out over time based on geography and the intermittent exchange of new technologies, most scholars place the start of the Iron Age around 1200 BCE, after the collapse of important Bronze Age civilizations such as Mycenaean Greece—a period known as the Greek Dark Ages—and the Hittite Empire in present-day Turkey.
From Bronze to Iron Age
During the collapse of the Bronze Age, the period witnessed the destruction of key trade route cities such as Troy and Gaza, which many believe followed a 150-year period of earthquakes, famines, invasions and sociopolitical unrest.
Literacy rates fell precipitously in its wake, along with rising shortages of copper and tin, which in turn led Iron Age smithies to forge even stronger metals by smelting readily-available iron and carbon into steel, resulting in a new metal that proved to be far superior in strength than copper, bronze or tin.
With the destruction of city-states and trade routes came a period of regional isolation during the Iron Age, which led nomadic pastoralists in the Near East to raise sheep, goats and cattle on the Iranian plateau.
A Short-Lived Iron Age
Near the end of the Iron Age, the period also saw the rise of the Persian Empire, during the reign of Cyrus the Great, which eventually stretched from the Balkans to the Indus Valley in India. Life in Iron Age Europe, meanwhile, saw the rise of improved farming yields brought about by the use of iron tools, populated mainly by the Celts, who migrated throughout Western Europe, including Britain, Ireland, France and Spain.
Iron Age Celts lived primarily in hill forts during the period, which afforded defensible high ground positions fortified by walls and ditches, allowing warriors to successfully defend hill fort settlements against attacks by rival clans. Hill fort families lived in roundhouses made of wood and mud plaster under pitched roofs of thatch, tending to crops and livestock such as wheat and barley, goats, sheep, pigs and cattle.
Herodotus and the End of Iron Age
Most scholars point to the end of the Iron age during the life of Herodotus, when the so-called Father of History began writing The Histories, although end dates vary based on the same principles of geographic isolation and the variable spread of new technologies and information, which saw a latent end to the Iron Age in Scandinavia closer to 800 AD, during the rise of the Vikings.
In Western and Central Europe, most scholars place the end of the Iron Age beginning with the rise of Classical Greece in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, while others point to the Roman conquests of first century BCE, making the Iron Age a relatively short yet important leap forward in the early history of man.