Get The Iron Out

     Have you ever wondered why or when the Iron Age ended? We're still using lots of iron, but somehow we've moved on to whatever the current age is called. Take Britain. People have been in Britain for almost a million years. Right from the beginning they were using stones to make life better. The Stone Age didn't officially end until four thousand years ago when people figured out how to melt metal, copper mostly, mixing it with little tin to make bronze. Even with that breakthrough, lots of people kept using stone. It was free and was lying around all over the place.  The Bronze Age only lasted a thousand years. Iron was much stronger and more abundant. It was tricky to work with, but once they got the technique down, bronze was done.
     But what ended the Iron Age? My history book said the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 AD meant the end of the Iron Age. But the Romans used a ton of iron. Those swords, for example. But without further explanation, my book calls the next 400 years the Roman Age, followed by the Saxon Age, the Viking Age, the Norman Age, etc., etc.
     This really piqued my curiosity. I could call up the history department at my local college, but I'm too bashful. I could pore through my books for the answer, but that would take too much time. I knew the answer was out there somewhere on the Internet. I knew Wikipedia would have the answer. I just had to formulate my question correctly. After getting fancy with my google search questions, I simply typed in "Iron Age." Wikipedia had a gigantic article covering the Iron Ages in all the many corners of the world, but my answer was right there in the introductory paragraph: "The Iron Age is taken to end with the beginning of the historiographical record." So that's it! Once you start writing things down, you're out of the smoky, dirty Iron Age and into the lovely realms of paper and ink and memory palaces.
     No matter how sharp you are, if you don't take good notes, you're still a bit of a barbarian.

"We don't need no stinkin' books."