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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haiku Elvis" data-source="post: 8754610" data-attributes="member: 7032874">I don't think this has been gone into in detail in this thread but a bit of history of iron. Iron ore is more common and in almost all places easier to mine than copper also unlike bronze you don't need to sail to the mist enshrouded ends of the world and talk to Cornish people to get your tin to make it so really should have been invented before the bronze age.The issue was, iron was complicated to work (ironically the main issue was it's melting point was too high so screw you "cold" iron) so for centuries the only iron that could be worked properly was meteoric iron as it was already a kind of insta-steel mix from burning through the atmosphere. It was of course stupidly rare and valuable. The Pharos had like one dagger of it that was one of the most valuable things they possessed and has been traced down through generations.The goal of cracking the code of temperature, oxidation prevention and carbon content was like the fusion energy of the bronze age and was finally cracked by the Hittites (also separately in Nigeria at around the same time apparently) in Turkey and let them be the Mediterranean badasses for a while and roughed up one of the Rameses a bit (Rameses II I think so one of the main ones). When they collapsed the secret slowly proliferated but was still difficult and very specialised, secretive and hard to recreate.The technological advantage that iron weapons and tools gave redrew the cultural and political map.In Africa it led to Bantu tribes conquering huge swaths of land. in Europe the secret of iron possessing Celtic tribes moved west from their Swiss homelands spreading iron weapons and tools through the medium of <s>interpretive dance</s> stabbing.Interestingly the Celts when they colonised Britain and Ireland and brought iron to these fabled isles for the first time they in part probably nobbled the bronze age <s>fairy mound </s> round barrow building existing cultures. And it has been theorised (only an idea, completely unproven alas) that legends of iron being anathama to fae and magical properties was just a cultural memory of the Celts <s>negotiating alternative land possession</s> stabbing the non iron welding previous inhabitants of the British isles.Cold iron though is just a made up poetic phrase. like someone said earlier the same way we say cold steel but it just means steel. Even wrought iron needed temperatures as hot as molten bronze to work due to the higher melting point</blockquote>

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