Cool referense on bronze vs. iron

...and Bronze Age civilization collapsed into a dark age for several centuries. Civilization finally re-emerged with the Iron Age. Iron had been used throughout the Bronze Age as well, but primarily for ceremonial artifacts. It was expensive. Iron took greater amounts of labor, and for that cost derived an inferior product. Iron could not keep its edge as effectively as bronze; it was heavier and more brittle. Additionally, it was ugly; it was for this that Hesiod wrote, "And I wish that I were not part of [this] generation of men, but had died before it came, or been born afterward. For here now is the age of iron."

http://www.energybulletin.net/10128.html

        -Adept