It's other way around! Iron age did not result in Bronze Age collapse, it was caused by it.
Iron has been known for a long time before the collapse, and widely accessible. It was little used because iron at that era was an inferior, substitute material (and is a pain in the ass to make because it involves first producing charcoal to achieve high temperatures). It only became stronger and comparably durable to bronze around 2nd century BC, in late Roman Republic. But the Collapse made long-distance transportation of inputs for bronze production impossible because centralised governments one could depend on for predictable rules and security, vanished. It forced people to turn to then-inferior iron, and start using and eventually, improving it, but it still remained inferior to bronze even in Classic Greece.
> but it still remained inferior to bronze even in Classic Greece.
The Greeks clearly had access to bronze from the archaic period and used large amounts of it to manufacture armor. Yet they still used iron for swords and spear points. This would indicate that iron was already superior to bronze for quite a few use cases.
Iron was mostly perfected by Romans through their conquests as they collected and systemised iron processing tech of the nations they conquered, which all entered Iron Age by then. By the times of early Roman Empire, high quality iron spread around enough to make bronze obsolete.
IIRC there were significant improvements in the early and mid “dark ages” and mass produced Roman steel was generally quite poor by medieval standards.
I think the main benefit of bronze and it still existed in Roman times is that you can cast it instead of forging. It took almost two thousand years to figure out how to make steel cuirasses that resembled the bronze ones Greeks used before the classical period. Of steel chainmail or scale armor was already superior anyway.
anovikov · · focus · HN ↗
klrefg · · focus · HN ↗
The Greeks clearly had access to bronze from the archaic period and used large amounts of it to manufacture armor. Yet they still used iron for swords and spear points. This would indicate that iron was already superior to bronze for quite a few use cases.
anovikov · · focus · HN ↗
Iron was mostly perfected by Romans through their conquests as they collected and systemised iron processing tech of the nations they conquered, which all entered Iron Age by then. By the times of early Roman Empire, high quality iron spread around enough to make bronze obsolete.
klrefg · · focus · HN ↗
I think the main benefit of bronze and it still existed in Roman times is that you can cast it instead of forging. It took almost two thousand years to figure out how to make steel cuirasses that resembled the bronze ones Greeks used before the classical period. Of steel chainmail or scale armor was already superior anyway.
IAmBroom · · focus · HN ↗