Beginning of Use of Iron

1910

Origin Thought to Have Been in Central Europe

It is commonly believed that the use of iron commenced in either Africa or Asia. The latest investigations prove that it was not worked in Egypt until the ninth century before the Christian era, or in Libya until 450 B. C., that the Semites adopted its use still later, and that it has been known in Uganda only within the last five or six centuries.

In China iron is first mentioned in 400 B. C. Bronze weapons were employed in China until 100 A.D., and in Japan until 700 A.D. According to a Mr. Ridgeway, who has investigated this subject, the metallurgy of iron must have originated in central Europe, especially in Noricum, which approximately represented modern Austria and Bavaria.

Only at Hallstatt and in Bosnia and Transylvania, from which countries the Achaians and Dorians are supposed to have migrated to Greece, are found evidences of a gradual introduction of iron, at first as an ornament applied to the bronze which it ultimately displaced.

Everywhere also iron was introduced suddenly — a fact which implies a foreign origin. He says that meteoric iron was known in Egypt in remote antiquity, but no doubt it was worked as flints are worked, by cutting or chipping, and was not smelted. In other words, it was metallurgy, not the knowledge, of iron that originated in central Europe.