1500 to 700 BCE · Africanspan
The textbook story sends iron from Anatolia to Africa last
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For most of the twentieth century the history of iron was taught as one invention with many copies. Smelting began in Anatolia around the middle of the second millennium BCE, moved through the Levant and the Middle East between 1300 and 1000 BCE, went east to India and west towards Europe, and crossed from southern Arabia to the Ethiopian highlands before the middle of the first millennium BCE. In North Africa the Phoenicians brought iron to their settlement at Carthage in the late ninth century BCE. Meroe had it by the fifth century BCE, arriving either up the Nile through Egypt or across the Red Sea, and became a large producer. Africa south of the Sahara entered the story last, receiving the technique from these northern points of contact. That version is still commonly taught. Ehret objects on dates. The chronology of the savanna sites does not fit a technology working its way down from the Mediterranean fringe.
A code like HT-WIB-000044 is a bates number. It marks one page of our stamped scan of the book, so the same page can be found again by anyone working from the same copy. Open one to see every entry drawn from that page.