History.com: 5 Iron Age Tools and Innovations

New techniques helped make iron stronger -- but there were also innovations in the use of gold, silver and stone. "The earliest iron objects in the world...start showing up around 3000 B.C.," says Nathaniel Erb-Satullo, a lecturer in archaeological science at the Cranfield Forensic Institute in the United Kingdom. But "that's way before what anybody would call [the] 'Iron Age.'"