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Comment by hadlock | Hacker News Reader

Or a straight-up lightsaber. The number of iron daggers on the planet 4000 years ago probably numbered less than 100

This view has started to change in the past decade. Iron is mentioned several times in Anatolia during the Old Assyrian Period c. 1850 BC. And this is several centuries before the time of King Tut. But iron of good quality was certainly rare and expensive, especially in places outside Anatolia.

Maybe, though even older usage "Some recent studies date the inception of iron metallurgy in Africa between 3000 and 2500 BCE" from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_metallurgy_in_Africa

But dry flat area's and many centuries of meterite build up, i'm sure there were many unique timelines for iron usage we may only speculate about.

Supposing that the dating of those African iron metallurgy sites is truly so early as claimed, that would be an independent discovery of the process, which does not seem to have had any influence upon the later discovery in Caucasus or Anatolia, of how to extract iron from iron ore, which spread during the 2nd millennium BC to the Mediterranean countries.

I believe iron is actually in the same ballpark as bronze. The benefit is more one of availability -- if you have the technology to handle iron, you don't need to go around and find sources for both tin and copper. And of course you might accidentally invent steel.

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