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That transition happened at different times in different places, as the technology spread. Mesopotamia was fully into the Iron Age by 900 BC. Although Egypt produced iron artifacts, bronze remained dominant until its conquest by Assyria in 663 BC. The Iron Age began in India about 1200 BC, in Central Europe about 800 BC, and in China about 300 BC.
Cast iron was first produced in China during 5th century BC, [107] but was hardly in Europe until the medieval period. [108] [109] The earliest cast iron artifacts were discovered by archaeologists in what is now modern Luhe County, Jiangsu in China. Cast iron was used in ancient China for warfare, agriculture, and architecture. [110]
The characteristic of an Iron Age culture is the mass production of tools and weapons made not just of found iron, but from smelted steel alloys with an added carbon content. [ citation needed ] Only with the capability of the production of carbon steel does ferrous metallurgy result in tools or weapons that are harder and lighter than bronze .
Steel is an alloy composed of between 0.2 and 2.0 percent carbon, with the balance being iron. From prehistory through the creation of the blast furnace, iron was produced from iron ore as wrought iron, 99.82–100 percent Fe, and the process of making steel involved adding carbon to iron, usually in a serendipitous manner, in the forge, or via the cementation process.
The first invention that separated modern humans from their evolutionary ancestors was the purposeful kindling of fires. ... Wrought iron first started to be produced en masse by the Hittites ...
There is evidence that iron was known from before 5000 BC. [15] The oldest known iron objects used by humans are some beads of meteoric iron, made in Egypt in about 4000 BC. The discovery of smelting around 3000 BC led to the start of the Iron Age around 1200 BC [16] and the prominent use of iron for tools and weapons. [17]
The Metal Ages is a term for the period of human civilization beginning about 6,000 years ago during which metallurgy rapidly advanced, and human populations started using metals such as copper, tin, bronze and finally iron to make tools and weapons. By heating and shaping metals in hot furnaces, humanity also learned to use precious metals ...
In China, blast furnaces produced cast iron, which was then either converted into finished implements in a cupola furnace, or turned into wrought iron in a fining hearth. [34] If iron ores are heated with carbon to 1420–1470 K, a molten liquid is formed, an alloy of about 96.5% iron and 3.5% carbon.