Iron: The Origin Story

Slowly, your village hears about what is happening. Invaders are headed your way and they are armed with deadlier weapons than yours. Even worse, they outnumber your people. Their advanced technology allows them to have larger populations and reshape the world around them. These are not alien invaders. They’re humans, and they have learned to use the most common metal on Earth: iron.

Early human history is usually studied in three periods: the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages. Historians organize early human history in this way because metal and stone tools are often the only artifacts we have from those times. This organization of time periods makes the most sense for Afro-Eurasia. Afro-Eurasia is an area that includes Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The Iron Age lasted 1,000 years, from 1500 BCE to 500 BCE. We’re used to iron now. Back then, iron-making was an important new technology. To make iron, you needed a furnace that could handle 1,538 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit). It took humans thousands of years to make furnaces that hot.

The timing of the first iron-smelting1 technologies is important. Toward the end of the Bronze Age in 1200 BCE, several major ancient states like Egypt and Greece began to fall. There were a few different reasons for this, including natural disasters and foreign invasions. When iron appeared at this time, it quickly changed the ancient world. Iron changed politics, trade, nature, and society all over Eurasia.

Swords into ploughshares: Iron reshapes power dynamics

Iron is stronger than bronze, but the real advantage of iron is that it is easier to find. Iron is the most common metal on earth. It is much easier to make than bronze, too.

Some states depended on trade to get materials for making bronze. If trade was interrupted, those societies could not make bronze weapons or tools. Societies who began making iron grew stronger. They could make weapons faster and cheaper.

More ore: Iron reshapes trade networks

During the Bronze and Iron Ages, traders and armies traveled across Eurasia. They brought bronze and iron technologies along Eurasian trade networks. Other parts of the world such as the Americas were left out of the Iron Age transformations. These areas did not use iron for another 3,000 years.

The earliest evidence of iron smelting comes from the Hittites. From 1500 BCE to 1177 BCE, the Hittites ruled an empire in Anatolia, or present-day Turkey.

About 500 years later, people all over Eurasia were using iron tools. In India and China, iron was used to make farming tools that helped farmers grow more food. This led to huge population increases in those areas.

There is evidence that iron developed in Africa around the same time it developed in Anatolia. Central African communities used iron to expand their societies.

Turning trees into swords: Iron reshapes the environment

Iron Age societies changed the environment in major ways. Iron Age societies had to plant more crops to feed their growing populations. So, they cut down trees to make larger fields and to make more wood to fuel the iron furnaces. Soon, forests started to disappear. Populations increased slowly for most of human history. During the Bronze and Iron Ages, human populations grew quickly.

Iron forges social relationships

Iron helped populations grow, and empires soon expanded their territories. These empires needed government and iron technology to support their large armies. Rulers looked for ways to manage all the people of their huge empires. This created a new social order. Even after the Iron Age, rulers built new roads and other infrastructure2 to manage their empires.

Gender mattered when it came to iron work. Men made iron in most regions, even in places where women were using iron. As iron became more important to communities, men often held more power in those communities.

One metal, many paths

The journey to iron technology took different routes. Historians Catherine Fourshey, Rhonda Gonzales, and Christine Saidi explain the route of the Bantu3 people in Central Africa. The Bantu used termite mounds for melting iron.

Bantu society did not strictly consider metalworking to be “men’s work” or “women’s work.” It was far more complicated. The Bantu language confirms that for Bantu speakers, termite mounds, iron smelting, and motherhood were related. The iron furnaces were connected with the idea of women giving birth. Birth was linked to matrilineal history. Matrilineal societies trace ancestry through mothers. This is just one example of the ways humans were connected to iron working, the environment, and each other.

1 Smelting is the process of removing metal from ore by melting it. Ore is a kind of rock that has a lot of metal in it.
2 Infrastructure refers to the physical and organizational structures that allow a society to function. It can refer to physical structures like bridges, roads, and water supply. It can also refer to organizational structures like the education system.
3 Bantu refers to a group of languages spoken in Central and Southern Africa.