IRON AGE

the axe and plough

And
Ships and trade
AXE AND PLOUGH
The destruction and wars of the early Iron age were, however, not without
their compensations. The substitution of new cultures for old meant certain
losses of continuity, but it also meant the sweeping away of much
accumulated cultural rubbish and the possibility of building much more
effective structures on the old foundations. The earlier use of metal was
essentially for the luxury products of city life and for arming a small elite
of high-born warriors. Bronze was always too expensive for common
folk, who still had to rely for the most part on stone implements, the form
of which had scarcely altered from neolithic times. The effect of the
abundance of iron was to open whole new continents to agriculture: forest
could be cut down, swamps could be drained, and the resulting fields
could be ploughed.
Image OF AXE AND PLOUGH
SHIPS AND TRADE
Another feature of the disturbed times of the Iron Age that was to be of incalculable
importance to human thought, and particularly to science, was the use of the sea-ways in
spreading culture much more rapidly than the old overland routes could possibly do. The
breaking up of their sea empire, first by the land based half-Greek Mycenaeans and later by
the more barbarous Achaeans from the Balkans and by kindred tribes in Asia Minor, was the
signal for a great period of piracy and sacking of cities. In the Iron Age trade ceased to be a
matter concerned only with a round dozen great cities, like Thebes or Babylon, and became
more and more divided among the hundreds of new cities that the early iron age peoples, such
as the Phoenicians and the Greeks, were founding all over the shores of the Mediterranean and
the Black Seas. Only places near the sea could get the full advantage of iron age culture.
It was the ease of water transport that gave first the Mediterranean area and later all
Europe, with its indented coastline, an advantage over Africa and Asia.
 PHOENICIANS:
The Phoenicians were master seafarers and traders who
created a robust network across-and beyond- the
Mediterranean Sea, spreading technologies and ideas as
they traveled.

In the Black Sea, there is a “Ship Graveyard” with

2,500 years of wrecked ships
END