Because pure iron, with no carbonization, is useless as a material for tools or weapons.

Carbonization was invented/discovered after the Bronze Age collapse, slowly over hundreds of years, exactly because they didn’t have access to bronze anymore.

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bryanlarsen 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Despite being "useless", almost all early iron age weapons were iron, not steel nor bronze. They generally knew about steel, but could not control the carbonization well enough to outfit the whole army with it. Steel did not become widespread until the Roman era.

	▲	noncoml 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Nope. It wasn’t pure iron. It was lightly carbonized iron. Also you are talking about Iron Age. Which came after and as a consequence of the Bronze Age. Pure iron is utterly useless as a weapon. Look it up.

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ericmay 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you suggesting that you disagree with the author's thesis and that iron wasn't a contributing factor or the major one?

	▲	jeltz 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yeah, the timeline just does not make sense. It makes more sense the other way round that the collapse made iron more appealing.
	▲	noncoml 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yes. Iron wasn’t a contributing factor. Iron was already known to civilization during Bronze Age, but they didn’t know how to make it hard. Hence Bronze was preferred. After, and because, of the Bronze Age collapse they started funding out how to make iron useful. Think about it, why did the humans in Americas never went through Iron Age? Because they never had a Bronze Age collapse.