Hittite Iron Age
The Bronze Age ended with the beginning of the Iron Age. Unfortunately there is no agreement on just when the Iron Age began. Some date its beginnings to 1500 B.C., about the time the Hittites started working with iron. Others give it a range of between 1500 and 1000 B.C.
Have you ever wondered where the appellation Iron Age comes from?
The Iron Age began when iron replaced bronze as the most popular metal used for weapons. This was the accomplishment of a group of people known as the Hittites. They were an ancient people from the area that is nowadays Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The Hittites monopolized ironwork until fall of the Empire when they migrated to other regions. The Hittites can attribute much of their success to their adeptness for metallurgy, which is the use of metals and the science of separating metals from their ores.
The Hittites developed new techniques for using iron around 1500 B.C. Up until this time, weapons were generally made from bronze. Bronze is harder and heavier than iron. The use of iron weapons, which remained unique to the Hittites, helped achieve successful military campaigns. After the fall of the Hittite Empire, iron-smiths spread into many directions, taking with them their knowledge of ironwork.
During the Iron Age, people across much of Europe, Asia and parts of Africa began making tools and weapons from iron and steel. The Iron Age allegedly started between 1200 B.C. and 600 B.C., depending on the region.
That said, humans may have smelted iron sporadically throughout the Bronze Age, though they likely saw iron as an inferior metal. Iron tools and weapons weren’t as hard or durable as their bronze counterparts.
The use of iron became more widespread after people learned how to make steel, a much harder metal, by heating iron with carbon. The Hittites are said to have been the first to make steel. And were known to have mastered the technique of smelting iron ore and were hammering on the first blacksmiths' anvils by about 1400 B.C., which is when the European and Mediterranean Iron Age is said to have began. The iron they first used likely came from meteorites.
The marriage between Egypt's Ramses and Hittite Maat-Hor-Nefersure ushered in a long period of peace and prosperity that lasted until Ramses' death. Thus, the Hitittes may have even sent craftsman to Egypt to make iron shields and weapons for the Egyptians. Iron was introduced by the Hittites in the 13th century but wasn't common until the 6th or 7th century B.C."
The Chinese metal-smiths, from the region of Wu on the banks of the Yangtze, were the first to work out how best to harness iron found inside the ores of the Earth's rocks. Iron is a natural gift of the earth that is almost as essential to the development of modern human civilizations as oxygen is to animal life.
As such, anew form of iron replaced meteoric iron during the Chinese Iron Age called Pig Iron, which was easier to work with and malleable. It was also easier to cast, or set into shape. The Chinese would have used huge fire pits that would have heated pig iron into a melted form, and then hammered it into form allowing it to cool and set using water.
Knowledge of how to smelt iron spread rapidly to the north. By the time of the Hà Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 C.E.), Chinese metalworking had become established on a scale that was not reached in the West until the 18th century. The Chinese Government built a series of large blast furnaces in Henan Province, each one capable of producing several tons of iron a day.
As ancient bronzes often had poor states of preservation, with porous, pitted surfaces showing green or dark colors. The element chromium although supposedly discovered in Europe in 1798 C.E. by N. L. Vauquelin, but had already been used in swords by the Hittites about 1300 B.C.
For decades, scientists have been perplexed by the marvelous preservation of bronze weapons associated with China's famed Terracotta Warriors, retaining shiny, almost pristine surfaces and sharp blades after being buried for more than two millennia.
Research by an international team of scientists published that they have may solve the mystery while putting to rest an intriguing hypothesis: "That ancient Chinese artisans employed an unexpectedly advanced preservation method using the metal chromium."
Iron is by far the most common metal in use today about 95 per cent of all metals used today are based on it. Without it, modern civilization would be very different indeed. Iron and steel, its derivative, are the materials of choice for making everything from cars to ships, pipes to forks, and computer disk drives to guns and skyscrapers.
Food for thought!