Widespread iron smelting
Siderurgia del hierro generalizada
- Date
- c. 1200 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Central Anatolia and Cyprus (Hattusa, Enkomi), Turkey / Cyprus
- Credited to
- Post-Hittite Anatolian and Cypriot smiths
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Reduction of iron ore in low shaft furnaces with charcoal to obtain sponge iron that is forged and carburised. After the collapse of the Bronze Age, iron, abundant and cheap, replaced bronze, which depended on scarce tin.
Iron was known from c. 2000 BCE among the Hittites, but its widespread use only comes after 1200 BCE; sub-Saharan Africa (Nok, Termit) developed possibly independent ironworking.
What it led to
- Democratisation of metal weapons and tools, undermining the military monopoly of the bronze-age elites
- Increased agricultural productivity thanks to cheap iron tools
- Expansion of settlement onto hard soils and forests that bronze could not clear
- The rise of large, uniformly equipped infantry armies
Built on
Made possible
- Long iron sword (Hallstatt C type)c. 750 BCE
- Blast furnace and cast ironc. 400 BCE
- Mail armour (chainmail)c. 300 BCE
- Wootz crucible steelc. 300 BCE
- Professional standing army (Marian legion)107 BCE
- Cast-iron mouldboard ploughc. 100 BCE
- Nailed iron horseshoec. 450 CE
- Wootz steel
- Chinese blast furnace
- Iron nail