Young Brunette Girl Posing On The Iron Bench

The first iron production started in the Middle Bronze Age but it took several centuries before iron displaced bronze. Samples of smelted iron from Asmar, Mesopotamia and Tall Chagar Bazaar in northern Syria were made sometime between 2700 and 3000 BC. The Hittites appear to be the first to understand the production of iron from its ores and regard it highly in their society. They began to smelt iron between 1500 and 1200 BC and the practice spread to the rest of the Near East after their empire fell in 1180 BC. The subsequent period is called the Iron Age. Iron smelting, and thus the Iron Age, reached Europe two hundred years later and arrived in Zimbabwe, Africa by the 8th century.
Artifacts from smelted iron occur in India from 1800 to 1200 BC, and in the Levant from about 1500 BC (suggesting smelting in Anatolia or the Caucasus).
The Book of Genesis, fourth chapter, verse 22 contains the first mention of iron in the Old Testament of the Bible; "Tubal-cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." Other verses allude to iron mining (Job 28:2), iron used as a stylus (Job 19:24), furnace (Deuteronomy 4:20), chariots (Joshua 17:16), nails (I Chron. 22:3), saws and axes (II Sam. 12:31), and cooking utensils (Ezekiel 4:3). The metal is also mentioned in the New Testament, for example in Acts chapter 12 verse 10, "Peter passed through the iron gate that leadeth unto the city" of Antioch. The Quran referred to Iron 1400 years ago.
Iron working was introduced to Greece in the late 11th century BC. The spread of ironworking in Central and Western Europe is associated with Celtic expansion. According to Pliny the Elder, iron use was common in the Roman era. The annual iron output of the Roman Empire is estimated at 84,750 t, while the similarly populous Han China produced around 5,000 t.