Who Discovered Iron?

Iron is a metallic element that is found around the planet. Because of its prevalence, it was widely used among most of the ancient cultures, and so no one person is credited with having discovered iron. 

No one person or culture have laid claim that they were the person who discovered iron. Archaeologists have evidence that people have been using iron for over 5000 years. It became popular with early cultures in part because it is abundant and because it was stronger than the bronze it replaced.

New discoveries about metals were made thousands of years ago simply because ancient people figured out how to melt a specific mineral. The discovery of each of these metals changed the world as they knew it, and influenced our world in ways they could not conceive.

Finding Iron

Iron is an abundant metal. Because of its prevalence, iron is also very affordable because it is easily found and easy to use.

The earth’s crust is made of 5% iron, and scientists believe that nearly all of the earth’s core is made of iron.

Iron is found in combination with many minerals, but it is usually extracted from magnetite and hematite.

Iron is widely used today:

• It is a major component in steel, which is used in many applications throughout the world.
• It is also an important mineral in the natural world. It helps to create chlorophyll in plants
• It is important to human beings, too. Iron is a vital part of our hemoglobin, which carries oxygen to our red blood cells.

Hittites: Early Users of Iron

Although people have been using iron for thousands of years, it was the Hittites who seem to have been the first people to actively use iron.

They created an Iron Age around 1500 BC by finding a way to smelt iron, heating the iron hot enough to remove its impurities. 

Iron gave the Hittites a huge technological advantage over the surrounding cultures. Because off iron their swords, shields, spear tips, and arrowheads were stronger than those of their enemy, giving them a tactical advantage. They could also trade the materials and build the wealth of their kingdom.

The Hittite civilization was located in what is modern day Turkey. Gradually, their neighboring nations learned how to smelt and use iron for themselves, and the Iron Age spread through the ancient Near East and as far west as Greece. Greece, of course, became one of the leading civilizations of the ancient world.

Chinese Use of Iron

The Chinese learned how to work with iron about 500 years after the Hittites. Starting around 1000 B.C. the Chinese were actively using iron, using knowledge which had learned by working with bronze.

During the time they relied heavily on bronze, the Chinese had learned how to build furnaces that could generate very high heat in ranges hot enough to melt iron.

By being able to fully melt the iron, the Chinese were able to cast the iron, which made the manufacture of iron products easier and faster than the Hittites’ smelting process. The Hittites were never able to fully melt the iron, so their iron work was far more labor intensive than the Chinese.

The ability to cast iron gave the Chinese a method of mass production, enabling the Chinese to cast hundreds or thousands of items in the same shape. They could make identical weapons or tools, which had been unattainable to this point.

As was the case with the Hittites, the Chinese culture’s knowledge of iron spread throughout the Far East to cultures such as Korea and Japan.  

Europeans and Iron

Europe entered their Iron Age around 900 BC, about a hundred years later than the Chinese. Iron came into use in the eastern Europe and gradually made its way across the continent.

The European Iron Age came before the rise of the Roman Empire. No doubt, Rome was able to make use of the iron weapons in their conquest of their part of the world.