Nature's Evil

A noble metal that did not rust, bronze had its limits: a short sword could be made out of bronze, but not a long sabre. Bronze shields and armour offered little protection against the crude but heavy weapons of the barbarians. For making ploughs, bronze was too expensive and also prone to wear and tear. The extended delivery routes for tin were the weak spot in the production of bronze. With time, the invasion by the ‘people from the sea’ – the barbarian tribes from Eastern Europe who used iron – destroyed the ancient supply routes for tin. Relying on rare and remote resources, the Bronze Age was a time of social inequality. The owners of pits and mines became rich, but even they depended on those who controlled the delivery routes. 3

Iron

People found nuggets of pure iron in meteorites; they were rarer and more precious than gold. In the mountains accessible to the people of the ancient world – in Anatolia, the Appenines, later in the Balkans and the Carpathians – there were outcrops of iron ore. These were extracted from quarries, but iron ore appears on the earth’s surface as rarely as a meteorite. Most ancient iron was found in bogs and lakes. This type of ore is now called limonite, mudstones or simply bog iron. Historians tend to underestimate its significance.

Bog iron comes in the form of unprepossessing, rough stone nuggets of a distinctive colour, ranging from brown to yellow. They consist of ferric oxide and various admixtures; for modern metallurgy they are worthless, but they have some special qualities. Progress in the art of smelting was dictated by the use of ever higher temperatures. Different metals have different smelting temperatures; the smelting temperature of iron (for modern processes, it is higher than 1,500º Celsius) is much higher than for copper (1,000º Celsius). But iron from bog ore smelts at an unusually low temperature, starting at 400º Celsius. This temperature could be reached even by burning peat from that same bog; using good wood or, better still, charcoal, an experienced blacksmith could produce high-quality iron from bog ore. Repeated forging in a furnace removed oxygen and chemical impurities. Moreover, bog ore contained a lot of silicon. This made the iron stainless, a result that the blacksmiths of the mountains were unable to achieve for centuries.

The Iron Age staggered into being after a series of false starts. The switch of the resource platform happened about 1200 bce , when the ‘people from the sea’ arrived from beyond the Balkans to destroy and plunder the ancient centres of civilisation. The invaders were armed with iron weapons, and this metal enabled their feats as seafarers. In Anatolia, the previously unknown Hittites founded a powerful state, which was based on iron; it competed with Egypt, the leading power of the Bronze Age. The Hittites forged swords and axes from iron and made iron parts for their chariots too. They ousted the Egyptians from the Levant and Canaan, but then the Hittite state also collapsed, unable to withstand the onslaught of the Phrygian cavalry who had attacked from the North. This was the era when massed infantry, armed with iron sabres and helmets, gained victory over chariots from which high-born warriors fired arrows and wielded lances – a period of global destruction of the old priestly elites. The barbarian peoples – the Etruscans, the Phoenicians and the Celts – were great masters of iron and used it for making ploughs, horseshoes, nails and cheap weapons for the infantry. For the Romans, iron was a despised metal, but they learnt from their enemies.

In ancient Israel, the tribe of Yahweh cleared the land with iron axes, mattocks and ploughs. In the first temple of King Solomon, started in 950 bce , both copper and iron were used. The invention of the iron plough was a major factor in the productivity of agriculture. The wheels for war chariots, carriages and wheelbarrows needed iron parts. Then ploughs were also put on wheels; combining wood and iron, these implements enabled the mass use of draught animals. Only Eurasia used the plough; before the arrival of settlers the plough was unknown in America, Africa or Oceania. Experiments by anthropologists have shown that you can chop down a tree with a bronze axe three times faster than with a stone axe and eight times faster with an iron axe. Increasing the area of arable land and making the competition for land more intense, iron tools strengthened social stratification and the role of the state. From now on, property rights would define life and wealth, and only the state could protect these rights.