Ollie Broder, age 13, of Mesa, Ariz., for his question:
WHEN WAS THE IRON AGE?
Iron Age is that period of history that started about 1100 B.C. with the widespread use of iron for tools and weapons. This age has continued to the present day.
True iron working began in Asia Minor which is now part of Turkey. It started in 1100 B.C. and it slowly spread over much of Asia, Africa and Europe. The great advantage of iron was its cheapness, because iron ore is abundant and widespread.
In the Iron Age, carpenters and masons abandoned the crude tools of the Bronze Age. Craftsmen could then afford metal tools and made wide use of iron, including iron plows.
Southern Europe learned the use of iron long before the northern countries did. The Greek poet Homer speaks of iron as something precious, like gold. But the people of Scandinavia knew little about iron before the time of Julius Caesar.
During the Iron Age, many inventions, such as the alphabet, came into general use. People also began to use coins. Improved trade, transportation and communication helped civilization expand and progress.
As early as the beginning of the Bronze Age, about 3000 B.C., some people in the Middle East began to make tools by beating and hammering iron from meteors. They decorated many of these skillfully made implements.
The oldest pieces of early iron tools are Egyptian sickle blades and a crosscut saw thousands of years old.
During the Bronze Age, most craftsmen continued to use the primitive tools of the late Stone Age, because metal was so expensive. Only kings and warriors could afford it.
The Bronze Age is not a particular period of time. Some areas had their Bronze Age early while others had it late. In some places, it lasted for a long time and in others it was very short.
The people of some regions skipped the Bronze Age altogether.
The earliest known use of bronze occurred in Sumer, in Mesopotamia, about 3500 B.C. People continued to use it until about 1100 B.C. That is when iron made its first appearance, and became common.
The Bronze Age in any region usually overlapped an earlier Stone Age and a later Iron Age, because people did not stop using one material all at once. Some South American Indians, as a matter of fact, had begun to use bronze only shortly before the white men came.
Stone Age is a term used to designate the period in all human cultures when men used stone, rather than metal tools. The Stone Age started more than 2.5 million years ago when human beings first began to make crude chopping tools from pebbles. It first ended in Mesopotamia and Egypt about 3000 B.C. when people discovered the use of bronze.
Scientists divide the Stone Age on the basis of toolmaking techniques into three phases: Paleothic, Mesolithic and Neolithic. .