Some historians argue that the Iron Age never ended and that we are still living in it today. This was most likely because steel was still widely used, particularly during the Industrial Revolution in the early twentieth century and even today.
Many scholars place the end of the Iron Age in at around 550 B.C., when Herodotus, “The Father of History,” began writing “The Histories,” though the end date varies by region. In Scandinavia, it ended closer to A.D. 800 with the rise of the Vikings.
The Roman period is preceded by the Iron Age, and followed by the Early Medieval period.
The Iron Age ended when human culture advanced to new levels. In some instances, the iron age ended when a civilisation still in its wake was conquered by a superior civilisation. For example the Iron Age in ancient Britain came to an end when its southern half was conquered by the Roman Empire.
The end of the Iron Age is generally considered to coincide with the Roman Conquests, and history books tell us that it was succeeded by Antiquity and then the Middle Ages.
The Early Iron Age in Greece was also called the Dark Age because, the literacy and culture of the Mycenaean civilization was destroyed so little is known about this period in Ancient Grece. Literacy was not recovered until the Greek Iron Age or Archaic period around 800 BCE.
Finally, although bronze is a superior metal, stronger than iron and corrosion resistant, iron became popular since iron was readily available and cheaper than bronze.
The Roman Iron Age (1–400 AD) is a part of the Iron Age. The name comes from the hold that the Roman Empire had begun to exert on the Germanic tribes of Northern Europe. In Scandinavia, there was a great import of goods, such as coins, vessels, bronze images, glass beakers, enameled buckles, weapons, etc.
The five ages of man is a Greek creation story that traces the lineage of mankind through five successive "ages" or "races" including the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Age of Heroes, and the present (to Hesiod) Iron Age.
The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth's history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems.
It's a new geologic age some scientists have proposed to mark the near-universal spread of plastic around Earth. Since the 1950s, researchers say, we've been living in the Age of Plastics. You may have heard of another relatively new time period—the Anthropocene, or Epoch of Humans.
It is generally categorized in three archaeological periods: the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age.
The last geologic epoch, the Holocene, is thought to encompass both the Bronze and Iron Ages. But we do not yet have a tool or material to define our current age.
It was not until the Iron Age (12th – 13th century BC), however, that longer, sturdier swords could be developed. By smelting raw iron (iron ore) using extreme heat and coal to bind the oxygen in the iron ore, swordsmiths were able to produce swords of almost pure iron with carbon dioxide as a by-product.
Why did it take 2000 years for bronze to be replaced by iron? Looking around us we see structural steel and concrete seemingly everywhere in our modern cities.
Of course, most modern swords are made of steel because of its superior quality. From the Japanese katana to the Korean Ssangsudo, steel is the preferred choice of metal for swordmaking.
Languages mentioned include Aquitanian, Basque, Celtiberian, Etruscan, Finnish, Hungarian, Iberian, Lepontic, Lusitanian, Pictish, Raetic, 'Tartessian', Thracian and the Ladin dialect of the Italian Alps.
Mead was primarily an elite drink because it was produced from honey taken from the hives of wild bees, the only form of sweetener available to prehistoric European peoples and therefore a valuable commodity.
The daily diet for most people in Iron Age Britain was a combination of bread, porridges and stews. Wheat and barley were two of the most common crops grown by Iron Age people. They would have been ground into flour to make bread, using quern stones.
The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire, in 1453 CE, marks the end of the dark ages.
- All knowledge of medicine, engineering, science, geography, history, the arts, were gone. The great libraries full of scrolls became bonfires. Today experts estimate that 90% of Greek and Roman knowledge was lost forever during the Dark Ages.
The Iron Age was a prehistoric, archaeological era from around 1200 BCE to 100 BCE (the 12th to 1st Centuries BCE). Iron material was commonly used during the Iron Age to make tools, so the era was named after it.