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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ibram" data-source="post: 2506782" data-attributes="member: 17640">damned fine sailing ships were made before iron/steel was invented, wooden pegs and bronze nails can do the trick quite well.You are limited from building things "big" with bronze and iron.  wagons, ships, are smaller then things made with steel.  Its also not possible to make large metal items (like plow blades) without good Iron/Steel.Yet many things can be made with bronze/iron (damned good stuff to).  In many ways our basic tool set has'nt changed much over the past 3k years.  Early metalsmiths made surgical tools from bronze that were as functional as modern ones.The trouble with bronze is that its soft and its... complicated... to make.  Bronze is a copper-tin alloy, and so both those metals were needed in large quantities.  Their were vast trade networks in the ancient world carring those metals to settlements where bronze was smelted.  combined that with the softness of bronze and your metal tools would be more expensive.</blockquote>