Three-age System - Iron Age Subdivisions

Iron Age Subdivisions

The advent of the Iron Age is marked by the initial use of iron in any region, whether brought in from elsewhere, or by evolution of the smelting process in that region. As the ancient writers considered that they were in the Iron Age, they did not define an end to it. This convention prevailed in modern archaeology as well. Iron is still the major hard material in use in modern civilization. Steel is a vital and indispensable modern industry. Many other suggestions have been made: industrial, machine, plastic, information, etc., but none have been seriously incorporated into the three-age system. Scholarship leaves the question open. Generally in history the Iron Age refers to mainly the 1st millennium BC, no later than the 1st millennium AD. In some cases, however, modern civilization is the Iron Age, as when the African archaeologists hypothesized that Europeans and Middle Easterners brought it to Central and South Africa.