When Was the Iron Age, Anyway?

Those who follow my blog will know I’ve been reading in Job. I ran across these verses the other day: Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone (Job 28:1-2). This fired my imagination. Even the most conservative estimates of when Job was written are during the Abrahamic era. At that time, they were mining silver, gold, iron, and brass!

I can go one better. In Genesis 4:22 we read, Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron. Tubalcain was the seventh generation from Adam. By that time, this guy was teaching other workers in brass and iron.

In 1991, in the Ötzal Alps, German hikers discovered a “wet mummy” who was sticking out of the ice. He got two nicknames, The Ice Man (obvious!) and Ötzi (for the mountains where he was found). He is remarkable because his skin is intact, he was clothed, and his clothing and bow, arrows, hatchet, quiver, dagger with scabbard, and a white marble, tasseled bead ornament were found along with him. Can you even imagine! What a find! His body has been carbon dated at between 3350 and 3100 BC. He carried a flint dagger and arrow points, but the experts had to do some rethinking when it came to the copper hatchet. By the way, the hatchet blade was cast, and the point was cold-hammered. Primitive?

There’s a little bit of leeway, but the date (based on James Ussher’s calculations) for the universal Flood of Genesis is 2345 BC, plus or minus five years.

Tubalcain lived quite a while before the Flood, and he was already knowledgeable in brass and iron.

“Ötzi” had to have lived after the Flood. It is quite possible that he lived soon after the Flood and was preserved in the Ice Age that followed it.

The creationist view of history, based on God’s Word, discounts divisions of stone and iron ages. The Bible speaks of man’s ability to create very advanced civilizations from the very beginning.

No grunting, subnormal, ape-like cave men. No separate stone age. No iron age after that.

Instead: intelligent, able, creative people. God’s perfect creation. (Both Tubalcain and “Ötzi” would concur.)