Hacker News Reader

Don't confuse iron weapons with steel. Steel was much better than bronze, but they didn't know how to make steel and so examples were rare. (probably not unknown, making iron weapons does produce a small amount of steel and if you're careful you can separate that out and after a thousand or so iron swords you can make one steel sword. I've seen it suggested that this is where the stories of a legendary weapon comes from - probably not something we could ever know for sure.)

> Iron weapons aren't any better than bronze ones

Bronze is harder and more corrosion resistant, but forged iron (and especially iron that has been reforged) has a higher yield strength and is lighter, allowing longer lighter weapons. Compare the profile of bronze age and iron age swords in any museum and you can see that the bronze blades are shorter and wider that the iron weapons, and they would be considerably heavier.

Your twitter link is a summary of the linked article - from the editor-in-chief - in case someone else sees "this guy" and assumes it would be a different take than the one in the featured article.

>Iron weapons aren't any better than bronze ones

"Quantity has a quality all its own"