Science and Technology in the Iron Age

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE IRON AGE*

by

J. D. Bernal

The period covered by this chapter is one of crucial importance in the history of mankind and especially in the history of science. From the middle of the second millennium B.C. a number of causes--technical, economic, and political--brought about the transformation of the limited civilization of a few river-basins into one which embraced the major cultivable areas of Asia, northern Africa, and Europe. The civilization of the Iron Age, wherever it was developed, was less orderly and peaceful than that it replaced, but it was also more flexible and rational. The Iron Age did not provide such enormous technical advances as marked the outset of the Bronze Age, but such advances as it did achieve, based on a cheap and abundant metal, were more wide spread not only geographically but also among the social classes.

In this chapter we shall deal primarily with the Iron Age in, the Mediterranean area--the classical civilization of the Greeks and Romans. This is partly because it is so much better known than that of contemporary cultures of India or China. A more cogent reason, and one that relates particularly to the purpose of this book, is that it was that Mediterranean region which gave birth to the first abstract and rational science from which the universal science of our own time is directly derived. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, the civilizations of India and China had great contributions to make to the common culture, particularly in mathematics, physics, and chemistry, and their applications, like the compass, gun powder, and printing. However, the contributions entered into the main tradition of science and technology only after its outlines had been fixed in its Hellenistic form.

The Origins of Iron Age Cultures

The barbarians who overran the bronze age cultures of the ancient east had been unable to form stable states in their own homelands, for the most part covered with forest...