Copper smelters from 3,000 years ago may have experimented with materials just enough to launch the Iron Age. The Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age as the refining process of iron was discovered.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The site, shown here, was originally excavated during the Soviet period and was relocated using hand draw maps from a 1964 book.

Ancient copper smelters may have accidentally set the stage for the Iron Age. At a 3,000-year-old workshop in Georgia, researchers discovered that metalworkers were using iron oxide not to smelt iron ...

The process of ironmaking has relied for centuries on iron ore, an impure form of iron oxide, slowly being reduced to iron by carbon monoxide in a furnace. Whether that furnace is the charcoal fire of ...