Talk:Iron Age

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Contents

[edit] Viking Age

"In Sweden and partly in other nordic countries, the last part of the Iron Age (about 800 - 1100) is commonly called the Viking Age. "

In Denmark and Norway the period is not "partly" called the Viking Age.

What is it called then? Your statement is open to interpretation - either you mean Denmark and Norway always call it the Viking Age, or you mean they never do it? Nixdorf 01:23, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Information

Yak removed stuff from this page. Please discuss here and outline your reasons for it before removing anything. Nixdorf 23:27, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

OK, sorry. But I did not think a roman find is particularly illustrative of the Iron age? We face a problem here: in the scandinavian chronology the Iron age continues without interruptions to the early medieval times (but to have it including the Viking period is stretching a bit far), while in Central and parts of western Europe the Roman conquest led to a sharp break. So I think we need to divide the article geographically. And I was tempted to remove the lower part of the article, that deals mainyl with Ireland and Scotland, to "early medieval period". Any reasons why I should not?

--Yak 11:02, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

On Irish, Scot issues, no objections. The Roman artifact image can go too. No problem. On the Viking Age: we Swedes really call the latter part of the Iron Age by that name. We are taught in school to do so. It is presumably not justified to give the Vikings such importance that they have their own "Age" but it is not incorrect to state that the latter Iron Age is sometimes called so, for better or for worse. Nixdorf 01:20, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wag

What's a wag? Never heard of it. --Yak 19:00, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

It's a kind of souterrain from the north of Scotland
What's the deal with the bullet points at the beginning of the article? They need some work or removing. I don't think bronze tools are harder than iron ones either. Similarly, who exactly is it who thinks the British iron age didn't start till the C1st? Hillforts were built all over Britain save the very north of Scotland so I'm going to change that and I'm not aware of any examples of hillforts working well against Rome. Hallstat and La Tene are valid terms outside central Europe too. adamsan 12:34, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
of course, but I didn't feel competent to re-write the British section, so I just created the Central-European one. Seems you have taken on the task-great!--Yak 19:39, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Notice of Rewriting

I've rewritten this to keep the intro as general as possible, cover wider areas and move the mythology part elsewhere. The Scandinavian part makes some kind of sense now although I question the dating and would probably question the rest too if I were sure I knew what the author was trying to say. As for the Andronovo culture I want some verification of them before we credit them with discovering iron working. adamsan 19:34, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your work, Adamsan! I'd like to see more in this article on the origin of iron technology in the Near East, and its initial propagation from that area. I put in the first stubby Near East section of this article, months ago, and was rather shocked just now to find it unexpanded... so I expanded it a little bit. I will do more as I find time to do so, but I'm surprised that there seems to be so little interest in discussing the earliest Iron Age periods in this article. Arkuat 06:18, 2005 Jan 8 (UTC)
Being sat on the edge of Europe, it's a bit outside my field so keep up the good work and I look forward to reading more of your contributions on this thread. I've Googled that Scandinavian stuff and am going to rewrite it unless I see some evidence of Neolithic iron working there. The assertion seems to be based on a misreading of [1] or a similar document. adamsan 10:23, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Inca and Iron

This line was added:

"It was known by the Incas but they didn't utilize it as much as other technologies." claiming that the Inca knew how to utilize iron. I can not find any evidence to support this claim. Rmhermen 19:21, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

http://www.crystalinks.com/incan.html "Cusco was the center of the Inca Empire, with its advanced hydraulic engineering, agricultural techniques, marvelous architecture, textiles, ceramics and ironworks." http://www.rutahsa.com/incaarch.html" the row of narrow holes forming the line along which it was to be split seem to bespeak the use of a metal tool."http://www.allempires.com/empires/inca/inca1.htm "The metalwork was clearly inspired by the chimú and other capable craftsmen of tradition" The civilization preceding the incas knew... and some neigbours aswell but I dont have time looking that up. They knew, it was just not as important for them like using gold, stone or wood, which they mastered for their needs aswell.. like they knew of the wheel too, their kids played with it but they didnt utilize it... Ahm, which is the point of having that sentence their, becoming a "Iron Age"-civilization doesnt have to happen automagically... Foant 20:01, 2005 May 2 (UTC)
The first link you provide mentions iron working, the second one says How the Inka cut stone without iron tools is not known with any certainty, but in all likelihood stone was cut and shaped mainly with stone tools. Bronze or copper tools may also have been used, but would be of limited use with the hard varieties of igneous rock commonly used by the Inka
I've found some online bits about meteorite iron being significant the Incas but the majority of web sources talk about a non-iron using society with gold and bronze being the only metals they made use of. I don't think they were an iron age society going by the definition in the introduction but then the 3 age system tends to break down in the New World anyway. adamsan 11:59, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
yea thats what i was trying to get throu :)

[edit] Iron in Africa

My understanding was that Bantu societies in Africa entered the iron age independently of the rest of the world (that is to say, they discovered it without learning it from another culture). Is this correct? And if so, should the article reflect this? Rhesusman 01:11, 9 May 2005 (UTC)


Abstract : The Iron Age in Africa — H. LHOTE had shown as early as 1952, contrary to R. MAUNY's "Carthaginian theory" the autochtonous characteristic of Black Africa's iron industry, but his consistent arguments had not been taken into consideration by historians of Africa, in spite of the publication in 1959 of the first datations of the Nok civilization in

Nigeria : 3500 BC, 2000 BC, 900 BC, + 200 AD (L. M. DIOP, 1968).

The most convincing dates produced later are 1°) those of the Termit massif, in 1972, 10th century BC, in 1988, 14th/15th centuries BC, in 1992, from 1675 to 2900 BC (cf. G. QUECHON), 2°) those of lake Victoria-Nyanza region : 13 th/15th centuries BC, in 1982 (cf. M. C. van GRUNDERBEEK, E. ROCHE, H. DOUTRELEPONT).

The first dates of Nok and Ndalane in Senegal (around 2800 BC, cf. C. A. DIOP and G. DELIBRIAS, 1976) impose us to multiply investigations and datings in these two regions. Their correlation with the last dates concerning the Termit massif, suggest that iron metallurgy appeared in Western Africa around 2800 BC, if not earlier.

The iron found in Asia and in Nubia is too late to give an explanation for the presence in Egypt, of a few samples of an iron deposit dating back to the Pyramid period even though Egypt is lacking in this ore. It is not impossible that the iron should have come from Eastern and central Soudan by Ennedi (cf. notes by P. HUARD) in the framework of a very large spread network of exchanges, when the Sahara was less a desert.

Source: http://www.ankhonline.com/metallur.htm --84.130.18.47 10:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1400 BC?

The earliest known production of steel occurred around 1400 BC in East Africa (Washington State University (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/CIVAFRCA/IRONAGE.HTM)) ?

This seems an astonishingly early date. The reference given just states this date without explanation. Another site [2] says that steel appeared in the "middle of the first millennium B.C.", and this one says "fourth century BC". I'm not saying that the earlier date is wrong, but I'm suspicious about the lack of evidence. --Heron 20:28, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm sceptical too. If true, it would be a spurious find, certainly not systematic large scale production. I suggest we require a better (printed) reference. dab (ᛏ) 19:42, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
http://din-timelines.com/bce1699-1400_timeline.shtml says that in 1550 "The earliest form of steel is made by the Chalybes, subjects of the Hittites." But they were in modern day Turkey, in Asia. - Shaheenjim 15:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


The Iron Age in Africa

— H. LHOTE had shown as early as 1952, contrary to R. MAUNY's "Carthaginian theory" the autochtonous characteristic of Black Africa's iron industry, but his consistent arguments had not been taken into consideration by historians of Africa, in spite of the publication in 1959 of the first datations of the Nok civilization in

Nigeria : 3500 BC, 2000 BC, 900 BC, + 200 AD (L. M. DIOP, 1968).

The most convincing dates produced later are 1°) those of the Termit massif, in 1972, 10th century BC, in 1988, 14th/15th centuries BC, in 1992, from 1675 to 2900 BC (cf. G. QUECHON), 2°) those of lake Victoria-Nyanza region : 13 th/15th centuries BC, in 1982 (cf. M. C. van GRUNDERBEEK, E. ROCHE, H. DOUTRELEPONT).

The first dates of Nok and Ndalane in Senegal (around 2800 BC, cf. C. A. DIOP and G. DELIBRIAS, 1976) impose us to multiply investigations and datings in these two regions. Their correlation with the last dates concerning the Termit massif, suggest that iron metallurgy appeared in Western Africa around 2800 BC, if not earlier.

The iron found in Asia and in Nubia is too late to give an explanation for the presence in Egypt, of a few samples of an iron deposit dating back to the Pyramid period even though Egypt is lacking in this ore. It is not impossible that the iron should have come from Eastern and central Soudan by Ennedi (cf. notes by P. HUARD) in the framework of a very large spread network of exchanges, when the Sahara was less a desert.

Source: http://www.ankhonline.com/metallur.htm --84.130.18.47 10:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Steel in Arabic

in The Iron Age in Africa and India it is mentioned that the high-carbon steel produced in India by means of the crucible technique was known in Arabic as pulad. The name of steel in Arabic if fūlāḏ فولاذ. Arabic hasn't got the sound /p/. Unless this name is of Hindi origin, and in this case fulaḏ would be the Arabisation of Hindi pulad. If you have evidence for that, please make the necessary clarification. --Alif 19:18, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] British Isles: removing references to contemporary constructions

In the British Isles section it says: "Defensive structures dating from this time are often impressive, for example the brochs of northern Scotland and the hill forts that dotted the rest of the islands."

I think it is inconsistent with the rest of the article to mention defensive structures that are not directly related to the development of iron. The mentioned structures are contemporary of the Iron Age, but it is not clear how those structures became a product or an enabler of the Iron Age in the British Isles.

I think the references to those defensive structures should be removed.

Luiscolorado 19:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Verify

Can someone check this edit ? I refer you to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Roylee. Wizzy…☎ 15:56, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

i think this iron age stuff is true and gold

[edit] Iron Age Article Needs Work

Why is there no extensive mention of Anatolia/Hittite iron production? Good archaeological resources (World Archaeology, a juried journal, for example) places Anatolian mining/discovery of meteoritic iron at 2000BC - and its introduction into tool making at 1800 BC. There are iron weapons in Mycenae and Troy by 1300 BC. Why is Asia first? Either Sub Saharan Africa or Anatolia should be first. Why is Anatolia not considered part of Europe, in this context?

The continental masses/regional designations of where things are need some work. If one is going to look at prehistory in an area, use prehistoric terminology - not modern, historical names.Kaimiikekamaila 21:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)Kaimiikekamaila

Indeed, let's all try to make this a 'good article'. The basics are there but the sub-sections may need some rejigging as Kaimiikekamaila suggests. Also, I started a references section. Let's reference the statements made in the article. 64.229.146.220 12:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I have put in table for introduction of Iron and added references. Can the tag be deleted now? Regards John D. Croft 12:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
It appears as though there has been some progress in citations and appropriate references. Indeed things look much better, I'm sure Kaimiikekamaila would be pleased. However, large parts of the description of Europe and the Indian subcontinent still lack any references. Perhaps we could remove the tag while requesting a little more loudly that several sections still need a little work? Mumun 16:04, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree that this article needs work, but there is a need to distinguish between the Iron Age (as a prehistoric period) on the one hand and the discovery of iron technology on the other. This is also dealt with the history of ferrous metallurgy. It is important that Wiki should not keep developing parallel articles, as that is liable to lead to it contrdicting itself.
Anatolia ought not to be part of Europe, since it is also called Asia Minor. I was taught that Europe ended at the Bosphorus. Peterkingiron 22:50, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Map

The map of places that had iron by 1000BC is incredibly wrong. Anyone with a general knowledge of archeology and history should know that.--Yellowfiver 03:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

So what's wrong with it then, exactly? Mumun 無文 11:22, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
  • No explanation of the colours used in the caption - only when one enlarges the map. Even then the red colour is not explained.
  • Pink line is so thin as to be indiscernible in the thumb nail. This measn that it is far from clear what the map is supposed to be showing. Peterkingiron 21:06, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Map needs another round of improvements. Mumun 無文 21:47, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
If you double click the map (to expand it) you will see the captions explaining most of the colours. However, I do not think that content is relevant. Peterkingiron 23:36, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the solid colours are not useful to understand who was using iron. Perhaps the faint lines could be redrawn more thickly. Mumun 無文 12:02, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requesting review of my update

I just redid the beginning of the section "The transition from bronze to iron." I think my new information is correct, but I'm not an expert, so I invite you to review it. But don't reverse my changes unless you're absolutely sure they're wrong. I've found other sources that dispute my new information, but I'm still pretty sure I'm right and they're wrong. I think the reason they're wrong is that a lot of people fail to properly distinguish between steel and wrought iron. Making that distinction was part of the point of my update. Here is the information I just added:

"People made tools from bronze before they figured out how to make them from iron because iron's melting point is higher than that of bronze or its components, which makes it more difficult to make tools from iron.

During the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from Steel, which is an alloy consisting mostly of iron, with a carbon content between 0.02% and 1.7% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were superior to bronze weapons and tools. But Steel was difficult to produce with the methods available at the time, and most of the metal produced in the Iron Age was wrought iron.[1] Wrought iron is weaker than Bronze, but people switched anyway. Iron is much cheaper than bronze, since it is much more common than copper and tin, which are the ingredients of bronze."

Then I continued on with pre-existing information about the tin shortage that made it really necessary for them to switch from bronze to something else. - Shaheenjim 22:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Like your edits, thank you very much for your efforts. Welcome content, indeed. You present some of the main hypotheses that are used for the Levant and adjacent regions. What about China, Japan, Korea? There are a number of hypotheses that could be added to your edits on the 'switch from bronze to iron'. Mumun 無文 19:01, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
On wikipedia's page for Smelting it says:
"Different ores require different reactions at different temperatures, but almost always the reducing agent is carbon. The list above is sorted in increasing temperature order, so iron is the most difficult metal to smelt from the ones in the list (that's why historically iron smelting was the last to be discovered)."
On wikipedia's page for the History of ferrous metallurgy it says the following about early iron use in the middle east:
"Iron smelting at this time was based on the bloomery, a furnace... the bloomery was not hot enough to melt the iron. Instead, the iron collected in the bottom of the furnace as a spongy mass, or bloom, whose pores were filled with ash and slag. The bloom then had to be reheated to soften the iron and melt the slag, and then repeatedly beaten and folded to force the molten slag out of it. The result of this time-consuming and laborious process was wrought iron."
On wikipedia's page for the History of ferrous metallurgy it says:
"Archaeologists and historians debate whether bloomery-based ironworking ever spread to China from the Middle East. Around 500 BC, however, metalworkers in the southern state of Wu developed an iron smelting technology that would not be practiced in Europe until late medieval times. In Wu, iron smelters achieved a temperature of 1130°C, hot enough to be considered a blast furnace which could create cast iron."
And on wikipedia's page for Iron it says:
"Cast iron... has a melting point in the range of 1420–1470 K, which is lower than either of its two main components, and makes it the first product to be melted when carbon and iron are heated together."
So here's my cohesive summary of all of that, and response to you: My source for some of the stuff I added to the article was other wikipedia articles. I'm not sure how or if to cite those in the article. But I'm reasonably certain that I'm right that it's harder to make tools from iron than from bronze. One reason for that is that smelting iron requires a hotter fire than smelting bronze. Then after they've smelted it, iron's melting point is higher than bronze's, and early people didn't know how to make fires hot enough to melt iron. So they had to make things from iron that wasn't melted, which is a lot harder. It sounds like in China they developed iron working indepently from the middle east, and a lot later. And they started with a different type: cast iron instead of wrought iron. But I think making cast iron requires even hotter fires than wrought iron, so that would've been harder than bronze too. So I think the explanation works for the far east countries too, just in a different way. - Shaheenjim 01:11, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
There are a number of archaeological theoretical models that seek to explain the adoption and spread of iron. Only one is mentioned in the text thus far. Some theories do not address technological issues in the way that you have. Some archaeologists have attempted to shed light on social issues in prehistory related to the adoption and spread of iron. I hope we can briefly flesh out at least one more theory in addition to the one you have generously supplied so that the article can maintain NPOV over the medium term. Cheers! Mumun 無文 11:51, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with article about tin shortage

This article contains two descriptions of the tin shortage. I recently rearranged the article, and as part of that I put those two descriptions right next to each other, so the redundancy stands out even more now than it used to. Someone should probably consolidate them. I'm not sure how, so I'll leave it up to someone else. Here are the two descriptions, which I put at the end of the section "The Switch from Bronze to Iron."

"At around 1800 BC, for reasons as yet unascertained by archaeologists, tin became scarce in the Levant, leading to a crisis of bronze production. Copper itself seemed to be in short supply. Various "pirate" groups around the Mediterranean, from around 1700-1800 BC onward began to attack fortified cities in search of bronze, to remelt into weaponry.

Bronze was much more abundant in the period before the 12th to 10th century and Snodgrass,[2][3] and other authors suggest a shortage of tin, as a result of trade disruptions in the Mediterranean at this time forced peoples to seek an alternative to bronze. This is confirmed by the fact that for a period, Bronze items were recycled from implements to weapons, just prior to the introduction of iron."

This update to the talk page from - Shaheenjim 22:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with article about West Africa

This article used to include this passage: Anatolia's "use of iron (from 2000 BC onward) had developed by at least 1500 BC into the manufacture of weaponry superior to bronze. West African production of iron began at around the same time, and seems to have been clearly an independent invention (see Stanley J. Alpern's work in History in Africa, volume 2)."

I don't know what they mean by "around the same time." Do they mean 2000 BC, or 1500 BC, or somewhere in the middle? This is especially problematic since I recently rearranged some things in the article, and as part of that I separated those two sentences (though I tried to separate them in such a way that it wasn't misleading). - Shaheenjim 22:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dun Carloway photo?

How is this photo related to the article? I read on the article page of Dun Carloway that it dates to the 1st century BC. However, the relationship of the subject of the photo and the Iron Age artcle needs to be explained in the photo caption. Can an editor do this please? Mumun 無文 19:45, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biblical Reference

The biblical reference should, in my opinion, be removed. There is no reason to emend the word "smith" to "[iron] smith". The Hebrew word harash means an artisan. One who transforms a raw material into a finished one. This can be a harash even (stonesmith), a harash nehoshet (bronzesmith), or a harash barzel (ironsmith/blacksmith). Jewish tradition even uses the term harash in a metaphorical way to refer to "teachers of the young". All the verse in question states is that the Philistines had destroyed the Israelite manufacturing infrastructure. There is no indication whatsoever of variant metal usage.

I will wait a while to see if any sources are given to substantiate the claim that the verse in question refers to iron smiths, and if none are produced, I will delete the section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LisaLiel (talk • contribs) 21:01, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Irrelevant parts about Israel

What on earth is a large paragraph about "the states of Judah and Israel" doing on this page? Please move that to some page about the history of Palestine/Israel or similar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.136.49.54 (talk) 10:24, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Well spotted, I've removed it. May have been copyvio too.--Doug Weller (talk) 11:58, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Technical/formatting note

This article has a horizontal scrollbar in Firefox (latest version) at 1280-pixel screen width (although, strangely, not at 1024). Jdtapaboc (talk) 10:40, 27 May 2008 (UTC)