Iron ore, by contrast, is vastly more widely distributed.

While iron-working required higher temperatures and more sophisticated metallurgical techniques than bronze-working, the raw material was available in many more places.

The collapse of the Bronze Age trade networks — the disruption of the copper and tin supply chains — may have accelerated the adoption of iron technology as a matter of necessity: when you cannot get copper and tin, you use what you can get locally.

The Sea Peoples have sometimes been credited with introducing or facilitating the spread of iron technology in the Levant.