Iron Age
in classical mythology, the last of the four great ages of the world described by Hesiod, Ovid, etc. It was supposed to be characterized by abounding oppression, vice, and misery.
In scientific archæology, an age, the third in succession, in which weapons and many other implements began to be made of iron, stone having been used for these purposes in the first, and bronze in the second. As the advancement of each tribe or people is not necessarily at the same rate as that of their neighbors, the Iron Age probably did not begin everywhere simultaneously. In Denmark, and perhaps some of the adjacent regions, it may have commenced about the Christian era.