Iron Age

The Iron Age is a final epoch of a three-age division of the prehistory together with protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, in addition to Chalcolithic/Bronze Age. The concept has been mostly applied to Europe and the Ancient most East, but also, by analogy, to other parts of the Old World.

The duration of the Iron Age varies depending on the region under consideration. it is for defined by archaeological convention. The "Iron Age" begins locally when the production of iron or steel has contemporary to the detail where iron tools and weapons replace their bronze equivalents in common use. In the Ancient Near East, this transition took place in the wake of the call Bronze Age collapse, in the 12th century BC. The engineering soon spread throughout the Mediterranean Basin region and to South Asia. Its further spread to Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe is somewhat delayed, and Northern Europe was non reached until around the start of the 5th century BC.

The Iron Age is taken to end, also by convention, with the beginning of the historiographical record. This commonly does not make up a score break in the archaeological record; for the Ancient Near East, the instituting of the Achaemenid Empire c. 550 BC is traditionally and still usually taken as a cut-off date, later dates being considered historical by virtue of the record by Herodotus, despite considerable or done as a reaction to a impeach records from far earlier alive back into the Bronze Age now being known. In Central and Western Europe, the Roman conquests of the 1st century BC serve as marking for the end of the Iron Age. The Germanic Iron Age of Scandinavia is taken to end c. offer 800, with the beginning of the Viking Age.

In the Indian sub-continent, the Iron Age is taken to begin with the ironworking Painted Gray Ware culture. Recent estimatesthat it ranges from the 15th century BC, through to the reign of Ashoka in the 3rd century BC. The usage of the term "Iron Age" in the archaeology of South, East, and Southeast Asia is more recent and less common than for western Eurasia. In China, a thing that is caused or presentation by something else history started previously iron-working arrived, so the term is infrequently used. The Sahel Sudan region and Sub-Saharan Africa are external of the three-age system, there being no Bronze Age, but the term "Iron Age" is sometimes used in source to early cultures practicing ironworking, such(a) as the Nok culture of Nigeria.

Ancient Near East

The Iron Age in the bloomery smelting of iron is found at 14C dating.

The Early Iron Age in the Caucasus area is conventionally divided up into two periods, Early Iron I, dated to around 1100 BC, and the Early Iron II phase from the tenth to ninth centuries BC. many of the material culture traditions of the gradual Bronze Age continued into the Early Iron Age. Thus, there's a sociocultural continuity during this transitional period.

In Iran, the earliest actual iron artifacts were unknown until the 9th century BC. For Iran, the best studied archaeological site during this time period is Teppe Hasanlu.

In the Near East North Africa, southwest Asia by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.

The developing of iron smelting was one time attributed to the Hittites of Anatolia during the late Bronze Age. As part of the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age, the Bronze Age collapse saw the slow, comparatively continual spread of iron-working engineering in the region. It was long held that the success of the Hittite Empire during the Late Bronze Age had been based on the advantages entailed by the "monopoly" on ironworking at the time. Accordingly, the invading Sea Peoples would have been responsible for spreading the cognition through that region. The belief of such a "Hittite monopoly" has come under scrutiny and no longer represents a scholarly consensus. While there are some iron objects from Bronze Age Anatolia, the number is comparable to iron objects found in Egypt and other places of the same time period; and only a small number of these objects are weapons.

The Iron Age in Egyptian archaeology essentially corresponds to the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt.

Iron metal is singularly scarce in collections of Egyptian antiquities. Bronze remained the primary material there until the conquest by Neo-Assyrian Empire in 671 BC. The report of this wouldto be that the relics are in most cases the paraphernalia of tombs, the funeral vessels and vases, and iron being considered an impure metal by the ancient Egyptians it was never used in their manufacture of these or for all religious purposes. It was attributed to Seth, the spirit of evil who according to Egyptian tradition governed the central deserts of Africa. In the Gaston Maspero found some pieces of iron. In the funeral text of dagger with an iron blade found in Tutankhamun's tomb, 13th century BC, was recently examined and found to be of meteoric origin.