[Nikas777]

There was a great episode of some show hosted by Gunny Sgt Ermey - the sarge from Full Metall Jacket where they were comparing different compositions of swords and they compares bronze to iron and it looked like iron was superior but not by much.

So it reminded me of something I half remember. Iron was not a superior material at that time - not yet. Bronze was corrosion resistant and easier to make.

Bronze's problem was it was expensive - you needed rare tin and thus you could not outfit large armies.

Iron allowed almost every male of a tribe to be armed cheaply. You could not defend against that horde unless you were Egypt and they barely survived.

[SunkenCiv]

I think the melting point had something to do with it as well, along with lack of sufficient energy sources and ore supplies. Copper and iron (meteoritic iron; analogous to the bottle in “The Gods Must Be Crazy”) were used side by side back to the edge of the so-called Stone Age, but bronze is more complicated, that is, it was difficult to discover just how to do it.