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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haiku Elvis" data-source="post: 8755669" data-attributes="member: 7032874">No you got me on some good points. it's not automatically better and they did coexist for a good time and I did gloss over the how and why iron helped people go a conquering a bit. In terms of its really steel that's better. I was in part using Iron in a  broad poetic sense (like Iron age itself as it was in large part the steel age).  Although by the time you figure out how to make wrought iron properly you are already using charcoal or coal in the mix so your already taking your first steps to steel city, the purely iron age was pretty short.But having said all that, there are reasons the Pharos were hitting up the Hittites for iron and that we had an Iron age at all and not just Another Bronze Age with Iron Added on Age.One of the main issues with Bronze is it's made of copper and tin which stubbornly refuse to hang out anywhere near each other in their ore forms.Again theory time, it's been suggested the need to source copper and tin pushed the bronze age civilisations into becoming broad trading peoples which underpinned the rise of the Mediterranean empires.But back to late Bronze Age collapse, when Iron technology is spreading across the post apocalypse wastelands of the Mideast and Europe and those cosmopolitan trade empires have all collapsed or retreated into themselves, Unless you have a reliable international supply of tin, you don't have bronze weapons you have some copper and a desperate hope those guys riding over the hill are friendly.With Iron/steel work the rarest ingredient is the knowledge how to make it, as [USER=7026594]@Mannahnin[/USER] said above the materials are abundant so when iron working was only known by some it was a huge advantage in the age they were in regardless of like for like quality.Finally I think it got lost but one point I wanted to make was that iron was mythologised and held as special from the start which may well have contributed to its supposed mystical properties that worked its way into folklore.</blockquote>

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