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"In Sweden and partly in other nordic countries, the last part of the Iron Age (about 800 - 1100) is commonly called the Viking Age. "
In Denmark and Norway the period is not "partly" called the Viking Age.
Yak removed stuff from this page. Please discuss here and outline your reasons for it before removing anything. Nixdorf 23:27, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
OK, sorry. But I did not think a roman find is particularly illustrative of the Iron age? We face a problem here: in the scandinavian chronology the Iron age continues without interruptions to the early medieval times (but to have it including the Viking period is stretching a bit far), while in Central and parts of western Europe the Roman conquest led to a sharp break. So I think we need to divide the article geographically. And I was tempted to remove the lower part of the article, that deals mainyl with Ireland and Scotland, to "early medieval period". Any reasons why I should not?
-- Yak 11:02, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)
What's a wag? Never heard of it. -- Yak 19:00, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)
I've rewritten this to keep the intro as general as possible, cover wider areas and move the mythology part elsewhere. The Scandinavian part makes some kind of sense now although I question the dating and would probably question the rest too if I were sure I knew what the author was trying to say. As for the Andronovo culture I want some verification of them before we credit them with discovering iron working. adamsan 19:34, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This line was added:
"It was known by the Incas but they didn't utilize it as much as other technologies." claiming that the Inca knew how to utilize iron. I can not find any evidence to support this claim. Rmhermen 19:21, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
My understanding was that Bantu societies in Africa entered the iron age independently of the rest of the world (that is to say, they discovered it without learning it from another culture). Is this correct? And if so, should the article reflect this? Rhesusman 01:11, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
Abstract : The Iron Age in Africa — H. LHOTE had shown as early as 1952, contrary to R. MAUNY's "Carthaginian theory" the autochtonous characteristic of Black Africa's iron industry, but his consistent arguments had not been taken into consideration by historians of Africa, in spite of the publication in 1959 of the first datations of the Nok civilization in
Nigeria : 3500 BC, 2000 BC, 900 BC, + 200 AD (L. M. DIOP, 1968).
The most convincing dates produced later are 1°) those of the Termit massif, in 1972, 10th century BC, in 1988, 14th/15th centuries BC, in 1992, from 1675 to 2900 BC (cf. G. QUECHON), 2°) those of lake Victoria-Nyanza region : 13 th/15th centuries BC, in 1982 (cf. M. C. van GRUNDERBEEK, E. ROCHE, H. DOUTRELEPONT).
The first dates of Nok and Ndalane in Senegal (around 2800 BC, cf. C. A. DIOP and G. DELIBRIAS, 1976) impose us to multiply investigations and datings in these two regions. Their correlation with the last dates concerning the Termit massif, suggest that iron metallurgy appeared in Western Africa around 2800 BC, if not earlier.
The iron found in Asia and in Nubia is too late to give an explanation for the presence in Egypt, of a few samples of an iron deposit dating back to the Pyramid period even though Egypt is lacking in this ore. It is not impossible that the iron should have come from Eastern and central Soudan by Ennedi (cf. notes by P. HUARD) in the framework of a very large spread network of exchanges, when the Sahara was less a desert.
Source: http://www.ankhonline.com/metallur.htm -- 84.130.18.47 10:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
This seems an astonishingly early date. The reference given just states this date without explanation. Another site [3] says that steel appeared in the "middle of the first millennium B.C.", and this one says "fourth century BC". I'm not saying that the earlier date is wrong, but I'm suspicious about the lack of evidence. -- Heron 20:28, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
The Iron Age in Africa
— H. LHOTE had shown as early as 1952, contrary to R. MAUNY's "Carthaginian theory" the autochtonous characteristic of Black Africa's iron industry, but his consistent arguments had not been taken into consideration by historians of Africa, in spite of the publication in 1959 of the first datations of the Nok civilization in
Nigeria : 3500 BC, 2000 BC, 900 BC, + 200 AD (L. M. DIOP, 1968).
The most convincing dates produced later are 1°) those of the Termit massif, in 1972, 10th century BC, in 1988, 14th/15th centuries BC, in 1992, from 1675 to 2900 BC (cf. G. QUECHON), 2°) those of lake Victoria-Nyanza region : 13 th/15th centuries BC, in 1982 (cf. M. C. van GRUNDERBEEK, E. ROCHE, H. DOUTRELEPONT).
The first dates of Nok and Ndalane in Senegal (around 2800 BC, cf. C. A. DIOP and G. DELIBRIAS, 1976) impose us to multiply investigations and datings in these two regions. Their correlation with the last dates concerning the Termit massif, suggest that iron metallurgy appeared in Western Africa around 2800 BC, if not earlier.
The iron found in Asia and in Nubia is too late to give an explanation for the presence in Egypt, of a few samples of an iron deposit dating back to the Pyramid period even though Egypt is lacking in this ore. It is not impossible that the iron should have come from Eastern and central Soudan by Ennedi (cf. notes by P. HUARD) in the framework of a very large spread network of exchanges, when the Sahara was less a desert.
Source: http://www.ankhonline.com/metallur.htm --84.130.18.47 10:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
in The Iron Age in Africa and India it is mentioned that the high-carbon steel produced in India by means of the crucible technique was known in Arabic as pulad. The name of steel in Arabic if fūlāḏ فولاذ. Arabic hasn't got the sound /p/. Unless this name is of Hindi origin, and in this case fulaḏ would be the Arabisation of Hindi pulad. If you have evidence for that, please make the necessary clarification. -- Alif 19:18, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
In the British Isles section it says: "Defensive structures dating from this time are often impressive, for example the brochs of northern Scotland and the hill forts that dotted the rest of the islands."
I think it is inconsistent with the rest of the article to mention defensive structures that are not directly related to the development of iron. The mentioned structures are contemporary of the Iron Age, but it is not clear how those structures became a product or an enabler of the Iron Age in the British Isles.
I think the references to those defensive structures should be removed.
Luiscolorado 19:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Can someone check this edit ? I refer you to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Roylee. Wizzy… ☎ 15:56, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
i think this iron age stuff is true and gold
Why is there no extensive mention of Anatolia/Hittite iron production? Good archaeological resources (World Archaeology, a juried journal, for example) places Anatolian mining/discovery of meteoritic iron at 2000BC - and its introduction into tool making at 1800 BC. There are iron weapons in Mycenae and Troy by 1300 BC. Why is Asia first? Either Sub Saharan Africa or Anatolia should be first. Why is Anatolia not considered part of Europe, in this context?
The continental masses/regional designations of where things are need some work. If one is going to look at prehistory in an area, use prehistoric terminology - not modern, historical names. Kaimiikekamaila 21:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)Kaimiikekamaila
The map of places that had iron by 1000BC is incredibly wrong. Anyone with a general knowledge of archeology and history should know that.-- Yellowfiver 03:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I just redid the beginning of the section "The transition from bronze to iron." I think my new information is correct, but I'm not an expert, so I invite you to review it. But don't reverse my changes unless you're absolutely sure they're wrong. I've found other sources that dispute my new information, but I'm still pretty sure I'm right and they're wrong. I think the reason they're wrong is that a lot of people fail to properly distinguish between steel and wrought iron. Making that distinction was part of the point of my update. Here is the information I just added:
"People made tools from bronze before they figured out how to make them from iron because iron's melting point is higher than that of bronze or its components, which makes it more difficult to make tools from iron.
During the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from Steel, which is an alloy consisting mostly of iron, with a carbon content between 0.02% and 1.7% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were superior to bronze weapons and tools. But Steel was difficult to produce with the methods available at the time, and most of the metal produced in the Iron Age was wrought iron. [1] Wrought iron is weaker than Bronze, but people switched anyway. Iron is much cheaper than bronze, since it is much more common than copper and tin, which are the ingredients of bronze."
Then I continued on with pre-existing information about the tin shortage that made it really necessary for them to switch from bronze to something else. - Shaheenjim 22:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
This article contains two descriptions of the tin shortage. I recently rearranged the article, and as part of that I put those two descriptions right next to each other, so the redundancy stands out even more now than it used to. Someone should probably consolidate them. I'm not sure how, so I'll leave it up to someone else. Here are the two descriptions, which I put at the end of the section "The Switch from Bronze to Iron."
"At around 1800 BC, for reasons as yet unascertained by archaeologists, tin became scarce in the Levant, leading to a crisis of bronze production. Copper itself seemed to be in short supply. Various "pirate" groups around the Mediterranean, from around 1700-1800 BC onward began to attack fortified cities in search of bronze, to remelt into weaponry.
Bronze was much more abundant in the period before the 12th to 10th century and Snodgrass, [2] [3] and other authors suggest a shortage of tin, as a result of trade disruptions in the Mediterranean at this time forced peoples to seek an alternative to bronze. This is confirmed by the fact that for a period, Bronze items were recycled from implements to weapons, just prior to the introduction of iron."
This update to the talk page from - Shaheenjim 22:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
"I also wrote in the article correcting the assertion that Iron was more difficult to work than Bronze, Bronze is more difficult to work than Iron, but a superior metal to Iron - but not a superior metal to steel.
One can say that Steel was not yet invented, therefore Iron was not yet used in stead of Bronze." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.92.165.214 ( talk) 22:00, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I've reverted the above change as it was personal commentary. What you say makes good sense to me, but this belongs here on the discussion page as it's complete commentary and even in quotation marks:
"This is completely wrong, actually, to manufacture Bronze the alloy requires molten Copper, which is at a temperature just below (by 200 degrees F) that of molten wrought Iron (an inferior metal to Bronze). To produce Iron requires only that a molten slag of other materials be formed, usually at a much lower temperature of 1600 Degrees F, compared to the bronzing temperature of 2000 Degrees F. Therefore the argument that Bronze is easier to work than Iron simply is false. The reality is that Iron was an inferior metal and until the Bronze Age Collapse no one had any use for it. With the scarcity of Bronze, Iron began to become a more commoly worked metal and from there the discovery of steel was bourne and this is the reason for the beginning of the Iron Age. But Iron production requires less temperatures than Bronze production so the argument that it required new developments of smelting techniques is completely false. [4]
In the following paragraph it is stated that wrought Iron was the most common material in the early Iron age, since wrought Iron is about half as strong as cold tempered Bronze, I strongly suggest this article be re-written in order to correct the obvious inconsistencies with the arguments for the beginning of the Iron Age. There is no reason someone would transition from one product to a completely inferior product without some cataclysmic force driving them." Gendylan35 ( talk) 05:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
This article used to include this passage: Anatolia's "use of iron (from 2000 BC onward) had developed by at least 1500 BC into the manufacture of weaponry superior to bronze. West African production of iron began at around the same time, and seems to have been clearly an independent invention (see Stanley J. Alpern's work in History in Africa, volume 2)."
I don't know what they mean by "around the same time." Do they mean 2000 BC, or 1500 BC, or somewhere in the middle? This is especially problematic since I recently rearranged some things in the article, and as part of that I separated those two sentences (though I tried to separate them in such a way that it wasn't misleading). - Shaheenjim 22:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
How is this photo related to the article? I read on the article page of Dun Carloway that it dates to the 1st century BC. However, the relationship of the subject of the photo and the Iron Age artcle needs to be explained in the photo caption. Can an editor do this please? Mumun 無文 19:45, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
The biblical reference should, in my opinion, be removed. There is no reason to emend the word "smith" to "[iron] smith". The Hebrew word harash means an artisan. One who transforms a raw material into a finished one. This can be a harash even (stonesmith), a harash nehoshet (bronzesmith), or a harash barzel (ironsmith/blacksmith). Jewish tradition even uses the term harash in a metaphorical way to refer to "teachers of the young". All the verse in question states is that the Philistines had destroyed the Israelite manufacturing infrastructure. There is no indication whatsoever of variant metal usage.
I will wait a while to see if any sources are given to substantiate the claim that the verse in question refers to iron smiths, and if none are produced, I will delete the section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LisaLiel ( talk • contribs) 21:01, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
couldn't agree more. it's dreadful to quote bible history as if it's consensus archaeology. at best the POV would need to be changed along the lines of "the Bible claims..." 220.245.132.132 ( talk) 09:10, 27 August 2009 (UTC)snaxalotl
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There are now two sections about the Indian subcontinent. They need merging, but I'm not sure how. -- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 00:19, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I've deleted the following section from the article:
If you look into the claimed dates here, you'll find that every single one of them is wrong, so the entire thrust of the paragraph is pointless. I saw the inaccuracies and was going to edit them to change what the paragraph was saying to make it accurate, but every part of the section is wrong, so there's little point in it existing. To show how wrong the dates are here's what various articles say about when the Iron age stated in Europe: History of Denmark says the Iron age began there around 400 BC (during the Pre-Roman Iron Age), Prehistoric Ireland says it began there around 500 BC, Prehistory of France says around 700 BC, Prehistoric Italy says 1100 BC ( Villanovan culture). The claims for Northern Russia and Greece may be correct (the information on Russian prehistory is very poor on Wikipedia, so I'm not sure). Anyway, the reason that the paragraph is so wrong is that it's over 100 years out-of-date, since it is simply text copied from Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1910! Really we should be a lot more careful in inserting material from such an old source into an archaeology article, since the field has changed utterly since then. (No one would put 1911 Britannica stuff on physics into an article on General Relativity). So please no one undelete this paragraph, as it's completely archaic and useless. -- Hibernian ( talk) 04:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
References
EB1910CH
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).I can't make sense out of the 'Chronology' section. Dougweller ( talk) 10:09, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
When I came to this page I got an ugly error at the beginning of the History section:
EasyTimeline 1.90 Timeline generation failed: 1 error found Line 9: id:eon value:rgb(1,0.12,2.0) - Color value invalid. Specify 'rgb(r,g,b) where 0 <= r,g,b <= 1'
I have changed the "2.0" to "1" and it looks ok, but I don't know what it was supposed to look like.
Jlittlenz ( talk) 06:07, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
Tacitus citation: "Tacitus writes in 98 AD about the Germans..." was highly problematic. Both the translation and the underlying Latin text were garbled. I corrected the translation but left the Latin as it was. Y-barton ( talk) 19:38, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
Tacitus: arva per annos mutant can not mean they change their plough-lands yearly.
An Swedish author (Arenander) writes : (årligen flytta de svedjorna). Yearly they moved their swiddens. (referring to slash and burn shifting cultivation). The original authors uses the term arvus (aro) about swiddens, referring to slash and burn shifting cultivation. Plowing new land every year is impossible in the woodlands Europe was at that time. See more about slash and burn shifting cultivation on
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Slash_and_burn.--
Svedjebruk (
talk)
08:46, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
The citation to page 164 of Rapp stops too soon. On page 166 Rapp puts "true iron metallurgy" among the Hittites at 3000 BP = 1000 BCE. If you have other sources saying earlier, eliminate Rapp. 108.56.212.179 ( talk) 23:29, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
Remove the one that is wrong: "Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of iron production as taking place in Anatolia around 1200 BC, though some contemporary archaeological evidence points to earlier dates." "The systematic production and use of iron implements in Anatolia began around 2000 BC.[10] " 108.56.212.179 ( talk) 21:05, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
I have edited in references to how many people and clan's lived in that period based on references.-- Svedjebruk ( talk) 13:20, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Not sure how templates synch with the page they are embedded in, but I updated the template to reflect the actual dates from the Archaological periods page.
Seems like someone played with the dates for propaganda purposes, as Europe and Japan's Iron age were extended several centuries into the future (from what they are on the Archaeological periods page, and when the ages ended vis a vis the Roman and Yaoyoi periods) while the date for Korea was reduced from the beginning three Kingdoms period (400 AD) down to 50 AD, for some reason.
Is this a political/cultural thing? Do Koreans fudge historical facts for propaganda purposes? I was unaware that this was a thing, until I Googled into it and seem to have stepped into a can of worms. Can we keep the pre-history free from propaganda?
Anyway, the corrections don't seem to be showing up - they are saved in the template, but the Iron Age page still shows the incorrect dating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.193.247.221 ( talk) 15:37, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I've copied this text written by a new editor from the article to here:
Doug Weller talk 10:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Is this where I reply to younon this topic, Doug? If you're reading, regardless of the technical diffetence between between an alphabet and cuneiform, used in this context "beginning of the alphabet and historical literature" is not only going to be misleading to someone firsrt learning history, as it can be easily interpreted as beginning of writing, but with regard to the "beginning of literature" it is flat out wrong. Regardless of how it was written, by definition "the epic of Gilgamesh is still cery much a piece of literature, and was written long before the iron age. Without some kind of clarifaction, someone nee to history is very likely to interpret what is wriiten in this entry a "the iron age was the beginning of writing" Which would be very misleading to someone wanting to learn. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sethwudel ( talk • contribs) 14:37, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
In general the article concentrates on when the Iron Age begins in the various parts of the world than when it is treated by archaeologists as ending, which is no less important information. Obviously this is not marked by the replacement of iron as 'top metal', but by the arrival of literacy and historical sources, and empires. In the older civilizations, "Iron Age" is barely used as an archaeological period in the way it is for eg Europe, and this should be made clear. Johnbod ( talk) 13:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
There's clear talk about how it ends the Bronze Age, but nothing that addresses the issue of how an Iron Age ends. The closest thing is the history timeframe which implies that the " Middle Ages" ends it, which links to an article that is all about Europe. This encourages the view that the 3-Age System is Eurocentric. AngusCA ( talk) 04:46, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
when, why and how did the Iron Age end? Paulhummerman ( talk) 12:02, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
Listening to Adam Rutherford on the respected BBC Radio 4 Inside Science there was an article which claimed the Rutherford Appleton laboratory had dated iron smelting in India dated back to 1700 BCE.
The iron ore simply eroded out of hills in the Ganges plain.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09y6zg4 Time in 17:42
Any other sources?
JRPG (
talk)
22:37, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
People seem to have assumed that the presence of iron artefacts is equivalent to "Iron Age". This is not the case. "Iron Age" is a purely conventional term, and the existence of the convention must be shown. The convention for Western Eurasia exists since the 1860s or so. I think it is also pretty stable for India (although note how not a single source in Iron Age in India is cited as referencing an "Iron Age". I think the term in the context of South Asian archaeology becomes current from about 1960 [7]).
But it is very dodgy for East and Southeast Asia. There seem to be occasional mentions of "Iron Age" in the context of China etc., but these happen in passing and are never more than ad hoc conventions within a given context. This is not to dispute that iron was used in E and SE Asia. It is merely about the use of the tree-age system in these contexts. -- dab (𒁳) 14:57, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Using a 19Th century Junior version of the Britannica and the adult version from over a century ago for archaeology is unacceptable. I need to take a closer look to see what needs to be done, perhaps remove UT to here to be woken on. Doug Weller talk 05:47, 23 August 2016 (UTC) Pretty clear I was on my iPad when I wrote the above! Doug Weller talk 16:37, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
"In Sweden and partly in other nordic countries, the last part of the Iron Age (about 800 - 1100) is commonly called the Viking Age. "
In Denmark and Norway the period is not "partly" called the Viking Age.
Yak removed stuff from this page. Please discuss here and outline your reasons for it before removing anything. Nixdorf 23:27, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
OK, sorry. But I did not think a roman find is particularly illustrative of the Iron age? We face a problem here: in the scandinavian chronology the Iron age continues without interruptions to the early medieval times (but to have it including the Viking period is stretching a bit far), while in Central and parts of western Europe the Roman conquest led to a sharp break. So I think we need to divide the article geographically. And I was tempted to remove the lower part of the article, that deals mainyl with Ireland and Scotland, to "early medieval period". Any reasons why I should not?
-- Yak 11:02, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)
What's a wag? Never heard of it. -- Yak 19:00, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)
I've rewritten this to keep the intro as general as possible, cover wider areas and move the mythology part elsewhere. The Scandinavian part makes some kind of sense now although I question the dating and would probably question the rest too if I were sure I knew what the author was trying to say. As for the Andronovo culture I want some verification of them before we credit them with discovering iron working. adamsan 19:34, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This line was added:
"It was known by the Incas but they didn't utilize it as much as other technologies." claiming that the Inca knew how to utilize iron. I can not find any evidence to support this claim. Rmhermen 19:21, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
My understanding was that Bantu societies in Africa entered the iron age independently of the rest of the world (that is to say, they discovered it without learning it from another culture). Is this correct? And if so, should the article reflect this? Rhesusman 01:11, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
Abstract : The Iron Age in Africa — H. LHOTE had shown as early as 1952, contrary to R. MAUNY's "Carthaginian theory" the autochtonous characteristic of Black Africa's iron industry, but his consistent arguments had not been taken into consideration by historians of Africa, in spite of the publication in 1959 of the first datations of the Nok civilization in
Nigeria : 3500 BC, 2000 BC, 900 BC, + 200 AD (L. M. DIOP, 1968).
The most convincing dates produced later are 1°) those of the Termit massif, in 1972, 10th century BC, in 1988, 14th/15th centuries BC, in 1992, from 1675 to 2900 BC (cf. G. QUECHON), 2°) those of lake Victoria-Nyanza region : 13 th/15th centuries BC, in 1982 (cf. M. C. van GRUNDERBEEK, E. ROCHE, H. DOUTRELEPONT).
The first dates of Nok and Ndalane in Senegal (around 2800 BC, cf. C. A. DIOP and G. DELIBRIAS, 1976) impose us to multiply investigations and datings in these two regions. Their correlation with the last dates concerning the Termit massif, suggest that iron metallurgy appeared in Western Africa around 2800 BC, if not earlier.
The iron found in Asia and in Nubia is too late to give an explanation for the presence in Egypt, of a few samples of an iron deposit dating back to the Pyramid period even though Egypt is lacking in this ore. It is not impossible that the iron should have come from Eastern and central Soudan by Ennedi (cf. notes by P. HUARD) in the framework of a very large spread network of exchanges, when the Sahara was less a desert.
Source: http://www.ankhonline.com/metallur.htm -- 84.130.18.47 10:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
This seems an astonishingly early date. The reference given just states this date without explanation. Another site [3] says that steel appeared in the "middle of the first millennium B.C.", and this one says "fourth century BC". I'm not saying that the earlier date is wrong, but I'm suspicious about the lack of evidence. -- Heron 20:28, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
The Iron Age in Africa
— H. LHOTE had shown as early as 1952, contrary to R. MAUNY's "Carthaginian theory" the autochtonous characteristic of Black Africa's iron industry, but his consistent arguments had not been taken into consideration by historians of Africa, in spite of the publication in 1959 of the first datations of the Nok civilization in
Nigeria : 3500 BC, 2000 BC, 900 BC, + 200 AD (L. M. DIOP, 1968).
The most convincing dates produced later are 1°) those of the Termit massif, in 1972, 10th century BC, in 1988, 14th/15th centuries BC, in 1992, from 1675 to 2900 BC (cf. G. QUECHON), 2°) those of lake Victoria-Nyanza region : 13 th/15th centuries BC, in 1982 (cf. M. C. van GRUNDERBEEK, E. ROCHE, H. DOUTRELEPONT).
The first dates of Nok and Ndalane in Senegal (around 2800 BC, cf. C. A. DIOP and G. DELIBRIAS, 1976) impose us to multiply investigations and datings in these two regions. Their correlation with the last dates concerning the Termit massif, suggest that iron metallurgy appeared in Western Africa around 2800 BC, if not earlier.
The iron found in Asia and in Nubia is too late to give an explanation for the presence in Egypt, of a few samples of an iron deposit dating back to the Pyramid period even though Egypt is lacking in this ore. It is not impossible that the iron should have come from Eastern and central Soudan by Ennedi (cf. notes by P. HUARD) in the framework of a very large spread network of exchanges, when the Sahara was less a desert.
Source: http://www.ankhonline.com/metallur.htm --84.130.18.47 10:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
in The Iron Age in Africa and India it is mentioned that the high-carbon steel produced in India by means of the crucible technique was known in Arabic as pulad. The name of steel in Arabic if fūlāḏ فولاذ. Arabic hasn't got the sound /p/. Unless this name is of Hindi origin, and in this case fulaḏ would be the Arabisation of Hindi pulad. If you have evidence for that, please make the necessary clarification. -- Alif 19:18, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
In the British Isles section it says: "Defensive structures dating from this time are often impressive, for example the brochs of northern Scotland and the hill forts that dotted the rest of the islands."
I think it is inconsistent with the rest of the article to mention defensive structures that are not directly related to the development of iron. The mentioned structures are contemporary of the Iron Age, but it is not clear how those structures became a product or an enabler of the Iron Age in the British Isles.
I think the references to those defensive structures should be removed.
Luiscolorado 19:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Can someone check this edit ? I refer you to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Roylee. Wizzy… ☎ 15:56, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
i think this iron age stuff is true and gold
Why is there no extensive mention of Anatolia/Hittite iron production? Good archaeological resources (World Archaeology, a juried journal, for example) places Anatolian mining/discovery of meteoritic iron at 2000BC - and its introduction into tool making at 1800 BC. There are iron weapons in Mycenae and Troy by 1300 BC. Why is Asia first? Either Sub Saharan Africa or Anatolia should be first. Why is Anatolia not considered part of Europe, in this context?
The continental masses/regional designations of where things are need some work. If one is going to look at prehistory in an area, use prehistoric terminology - not modern, historical names. Kaimiikekamaila 21:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)Kaimiikekamaila
The map of places that had iron by 1000BC is incredibly wrong. Anyone with a general knowledge of archeology and history should know that.-- Yellowfiver 03:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I just redid the beginning of the section "The transition from bronze to iron." I think my new information is correct, but I'm not an expert, so I invite you to review it. But don't reverse my changes unless you're absolutely sure they're wrong. I've found other sources that dispute my new information, but I'm still pretty sure I'm right and they're wrong. I think the reason they're wrong is that a lot of people fail to properly distinguish between steel and wrought iron. Making that distinction was part of the point of my update. Here is the information I just added:
"People made tools from bronze before they figured out how to make them from iron because iron's melting point is higher than that of bronze or its components, which makes it more difficult to make tools from iron.
During the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from Steel, which is an alloy consisting mostly of iron, with a carbon content between 0.02% and 1.7% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were superior to bronze weapons and tools. But Steel was difficult to produce with the methods available at the time, and most of the metal produced in the Iron Age was wrought iron. [1] Wrought iron is weaker than Bronze, but people switched anyway. Iron is much cheaper than bronze, since it is much more common than copper and tin, which are the ingredients of bronze."
Then I continued on with pre-existing information about the tin shortage that made it really necessary for them to switch from bronze to something else. - Shaheenjim 22:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
This article contains two descriptions of the tin shortage. I recently rearranged the article, and as part of that I put those two descriptions right next to each other, so the redundancy stands out even more now than it used to. Someone should probably consolidate them. I'm not sure how, so I'll leave it up to someone else. Here are the two descriptions, which I put at the end of the section "The Switch from Bronze to Iron."
"At around 1800 BC, for reasons as yet unascertained by archaeologists, tin became scarce in the Levant, leading to a crisis of bronze production. Copper itself seemed to be in short supply. Various "pirate" groups around the Mediterranean, from around 1700-1800 BC onward began to attack fortified cities in search of bronze, to remelt into weaponry.
Bronze was much more abundant in the period before the 12th to 10th century and Snodgrass, [2] [3] and other authors suggest a shortage of tin, as a result of trade disruptions in the Mediterranean at this time forced peoples to seek an alternative to bronze. This is confirmed by the fact that for a period, Bronze items were recycled from implements to weapons, just prior to the introduction of iron."
This update to the talk page from - Shaheenjim 22:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
"I also wrote in the article correcting the assertion that Iron was more difficult to work than Bronze, Bronze is more difficult to work than Iron, but a superior metal to Iron - but not a superior metal to steel.
One can say that Steel was not yet invented, therefore Iron was not yet used in stead of Bronze." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.92.165.214 ( talk) 22:00, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I've reverted the above change as it was personal commentary. What you say makes good sense to me, but this belongs here on the discussion page as it's complete commentary and even in quotation marks:
"This is completely wrong, actually, to manufacture Bronze the alloy requires molten Copper, which is at a temperature just below (by 200 degrees F) that of molten wrought Iron (an inferior metal to Bronze). To produce Iron requires only that a molten slag of other materials be formed, usually at a much lower temperature of 1600 Degrees F, compared to the bronzing temperature of 2000 Degrees F. Therefore the argument that Bronze is easier to work than Iron simply is false. The reality is that Iron was an inferior metal and until the Bronze Age Collapse no one had any use for it. With the scarcity of Bronze, Iron began to become a more commoly worked metal and from there the discovery of steel was bourne and this is the reason for the beginning of the Iron Age. But Iron production requires less temperatures than Bronze production so the argument that it required new developments of smelting techniques is completely false. [4]
In the following paragraph it is stated that wrought Iron was the most common material in the early Iron age, since wrought Iron is about half as strong as cold tempered Bronze, I strongly suggest this article be re-written in order to correct the obvious inconsistencies with the arguments for the beginning of the Iron Age. There is no reason someone would transition from one product to a completely inferior product without some cataclysmic force driving them." Gendylan35 ( talk) 05:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
This article used to include this passage: Anatolia's "use of iron (from 2000 BC onward) had developed by at least 1500 BC into the manufacture of weaponry superior to bronze. West African production of iron began at around the same time, and seems to have been clearly an independent invention (see Stanley J. Alpern's work in History in Africa, volume 2)."
I don't know what they mean by "around the same time." Do they mean 2000 BC, or 1500 BC, or somewhere in the middle? This is especially problematic since I recently rearranged some things in the article, and as part of that I separated those two sentences (though I tried to separate them in such a way that it wasn't misleading). - Shaheenjim 22:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
How is this photo related to the article? I read on the article page of Dun Carloway that it dates to the 1st century BC. However, the relationship of the subject of the photo and the Iron Age artcle needs to be explained in the photo caption. Can an editor do this please? Mumun 無文 19:45, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
The biblical reference should, in my opinion, be removed. There is no reason to emend the word "smith" to "[iron] smith". The Hebrew word harash means an artisan. One who transforms a raw material into a finished one. This can be a harash even (stonesmith), a harash nehoshet (bronzesmith), or a harash barzel (ironsmith/blacksmith). Jewish tradition even uses the term harash in a metaphorical way to refer to "teachers of the young". All the verse in question states is that the Philistines had destroyed the Israelite manufacturing infrastructure. There is no indication whatsoever of variant metal usage.
I will wait a while to see if any sources are given to substantiate the claim that the verse in question refers to iron smiths, and if none are produced, I will delete the section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LisaLiel ( talk • contribs) 21:01, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
couldn't agree more. it's dreadful to quote bible history as if it's consensus archaeology. at best the POV would need to be changed along the lines of "the Bible claims..." 220.245.132.132 ( talk) 09:10, 27 August 2009 (UTC)snaxalotl
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There are now two sections about the Indian subcontinent. They need merging, but I'm not sure how. -- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 00:19, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I've deleted the following section from the article:
If you look into the claimed dates here, you'll find that every single one of them is wrong, so the entire thrust of the paragraph is pointless. I saw the inaccuracies and was going to edit them to change what the paragraph was saying to make it accurate, but every part of the section is wrong, so there's little point in it existing. To show how wrong the dates are here's what various articles say about when the Iron age stated in Europe: History of Denmark says the Iron age began there around 400 BC (during the Pre-Roman Iron Age), Prehistoric Ireland says it began there around 500 BC, Prehistory of France says around 700 BC, Prehistoric Italy says 1100 BC ( Villanovan culture). The claims for Northern Russia and Greece may be correct (the information on Russian prehistory is very poor on Wikipedia, so I'm not sure). Anyway, the reason that the paragraph is so wrong is that it's over 100 years out-of-date, since it is simply text copied from Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1910! Really we should be a lot more careful in inserting material from such an old source into an archaeology article, since the field has changed utterly since then. (No one would put 1911 Britannica stuff on physics into an article on General Relativity). So please no one undelete this paragraph, as it's completely archaic and useless. -- Hibernian ( talk) 04:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
References
EB1910CH
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).I can't make sense out of the 'Chronology' section. Dougweller ( talk) 10:09, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
When I came to this page I got an ugly error at the beginning of the History section:
EasyTimeline 1.90 Timeline generation failed: 1 error found Line 9: id:eon value:rgb(1,0.12,2.0) - Color value invalid. Specify 'rgb(r,g,b) where 0 <= r,g,b <= 1'
I have changed the "2.0" to "1" and it looks ok, but I don't know what it was supposed to look like.
Jlittlenz ( talk) 06:07, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
Tacitus citation: "Tacitus writes in 98 AD about the Germans..." was highly problematic. Both the translation and the underlying Latin text were garbled. I corrected the translation but left the Latin as it was. Y-barton ( talk) 19:38, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
Tacitus: arva per annos mutant can not mean they change their plough-lands yearly.
An Swedish author (Arenander) writes : (årligen flytta de svedjorna). Yearly they moved their swiddens. (referring to slash and burn shifting cultivation). The original authors uses the term arvus (aro) about swiddens, referring to slash and burn shifting cultivation. Plowing new land every year is impossible in the woodlands Europe was at that time. See more about slash and burn shifting cultivation on
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Slash_and_burn.--
Svedjebruk (
talk)
08:46, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
The citation to page 164 of Rapp stops too soon. On page 166 Rapp puts "true iron metallurgy" among the Hittites at 3000 BP = 1000 BCE. If you have other sources saying earlier, eliminate Rapp. 108.56.212.179 ( talk) 23:29, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
Remove the one that is wrong: "Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of iron production as taking place in Anatolia around 1200 BC, though some contemporary archaeological evidence points to earlier dates." "The systematic production and use of iron implements in Anatolia began around 2000 BC.[10] " 108.56.212.179 ( talk) 21:05, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
I have edited in references to how many people and clan's lived in that period based on references.-- Svedjebruk ( talk) 13:20, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Not sure how templates synch with the page they are embedded in, but I updated the template to reflect the actual dates from the Archaological periods page.
Seems like someone played with the dates for propaganda purposes, as Europe and Japan's Iron age were extended several centuries into the future (from what they are on the Archaeological periods page, and when the ages ended vis a vis the Roman and Yaoyoi periods) while the date for Korea was reduced from the beginning three Kingdoms period (400 AD) down to 50 AD, for some reason.
Is this a political/cultural thing? Do Koreans fudge historical facts for propaganda purposes? I was unaware that this was a thing, until I Googled into it and seem to have stepped into a can of worms. Can we keep the pre-history free from propaganda?
Anyway, the corrections don't seem to be showing up - they are saved in the template, but the Iron Age page still shows the incorrect dating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.193.247.221 ( talk) 15:37, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I've copied this text written by a new editor from the article to here:
Doug Weller talk 10:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Is this where I reply to younon this topic, Doug? If you're reading, regardless of the technical diffetence between between an alphabet and cuneiform, used in this context "beginning of the alphabet and historical literature" is not only going to be misleading to someone firsrt learning history, as it can be easily interpreted as beginning of writing, but with regard to the "beginning of literature" it is flat out wrong. Regardless of how it was written, by definition "the epic of Gilgamesh is still cery much a piece of literature, and was written long before the iron age. Without some kind of clarifaction, someone nee to history is very likely to interpret what is wriiten in this entry a "the iron age was the beginning of writing" Which would be very misleading to someone wanting to learn. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sethwudel ( talk • contribs) 14:37, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
In general the article concentrates on when the Iron Age begins in the various parts of the world than when it is treated by archaeologists as ending, which is no less important information. Obviously this is not marked by the replacement of iron as 'top metal', but by the arrival of literacy and historical sources, and empires. In the older civilizations, "Iron Age" is barely used as an archaeological period in the way it is for eg Europe, and this should be made clear. Johnbod ( talk) 13:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
There's clear talk about how it ends the Bronze Age, but nothing that addresses the issue of how an Iron Age ends. The closest thing is the history timeframe which implies that the " Middle Ages" ends it, which links to an article that is all about Europe. This encourages the view that the 3-Age System is Eurocentric. AngusCA ( talk) 04:46, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
when, why and how did the Iron Age end? Paulhummerman ( talk) 12:02, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
Listening to Adam Rutherford on the respected BBC Radio 4 Inside Science there was an article which claimed the Rutherford Appleton laboratory had dated iron smelting in India dated back to 1700 BCE.
The iron ore simply eroded out of hills in the Ganges plain.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09y6zg4 Time in 17:42
Any other sources?
JRPG (
talk)
22:37, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
People seem to have assumed that the presence of iron artefacts is equivalent to "Iron Age". This is not the case. "Iron Age" is a purely conventional term, and the existence of the convention must be shown. The convention for Western Eurasia exists since the 1860s or so. I think it is also pretty stable for India (although note how not a single source in Iron Age in India is cited as referencing an "Iron Age". I think the term in the context of South Asian archaeology becomes current from about 1960 [7]).
But it is very dodgy for East and Southeast Asia. There seem to be occasional mentions of "Iron Age" in the context of China etc., but these happen in passing and are never more than ad hoc conventions within a given context. This is not to dispute that iron was used in E and SE Asia. It is merely about the use of the tree-age system in these contexts. -- dab (𒁳) 14:57, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Using a 19Th century Junior version of the Britannica and the adult version from over a century ago for archaeology is unacceptable. I need to take a closer look to see what needs to be done, perhaps remove UT to here to be woken on. Doug Weller talk 05:47, 23 August 2016 (UTC) Pretty clear I was on my iPad when I wrote the above! Doug Weller talk 16:37, 17 April 2018 (UTC)