The Iron Ages in Europe originate in the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India (with the post-Rigvedic Vedic civilization), ancient Iran, and ancient Greece (with the Greek Dark Ages).

There is no definitive cultural break between the thirteenth and twelfth century BCE throughout the entire region, although certain new features in the hill country, Transjordan, and coastal region may suggest the appearance of the Aramaean and Sea People groups.

There is evidence, however, that shows strong continuity with Bronze Age culture, although the culture begins to diverge more significantly from that of the late second millennium.

The Iron Age begins in the eighth century BCE in Central Europe and in the sixth century BCE in Northern Europe.

North Africa (909 BCE – 819 CE) Early Iron and Antiquity — Phoenicians and Carthage, Numidian–Mauretanian Kingdoms, Rome, Garamantes, and Late Antique Transitions

Geographic and Environmental Context

North Africa includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia (Ifriqiya), Libya (Tripolitania–Fezzan–Cyrenaica), and Western Sahara.

Anchors: the Atlas ranges (High/Middle/Anti-Atlas; Tell Atlas; Aurès), the Tell and Sahel coasts (Atlantic Morocco, Rif/Alboran, Kabylia, Ifriqiya, Syrte/Gulf of Sidra, Cyrenaica), the Saharan platforms and sand seas (Erg Chech, Grand Erg Occidental & Oriental, Tanezrouft), the oases and basins (Tafilalt, Draâ, Touat–Gourara–Tidikelt, M’zab, Wadi Igharghar, Fezzan (Wadi al-Ajyal, Ubari and Murzuq dunes)), and the trans-Saharan corridors toward Lake Chad, Niger Bend, and the Nile.

• Coasts: Phoenician and later Punic ports (Carthage, Utica, Hippo Regius, Leptis Magna, Sabratha, Oea/Tripoli, Lixus, Mogador); Greek Cyrenaica (Cyrene).

• Interior: Garamantes in Fezzan; Numidia (Aurès–Constantine) and Mauretania (Rif–Atlas) uplands.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• Mediterranean coasts temperate; interior arid but stable around engineered oases.

Societies & Political Developments

• Phoenician colonization (from 9th–8th c. BCE) culminated in Carthage (trad. 814 BCE); Punic hegemony fostered trade and urbanism.

• Numidian and Mauretanian kingdoms crystallized (2nd–1st c. BCE), later client to Rome; Cyrenaica Greek cities flourished in the east.

• Rome created Africa Proconsularis, Numidia, Mauretania Caesariensis/Tingitana, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica; roads, aqueducts, ports (grain, olive oil, garum).

• Garamantes (ca. 500 BCE–500 CE) dominated Fezzan, controlling desert trade with foggaras, walled towns, and chariot/camel trails.

• Late Antiquity: Vandals (5th c. CE) seized coastal Africa; Byzantines reconquered (6th c.); Berberconfederacies expanded inland; Islamic polities advanced in the 7th–8th c. CE, establishing Kairouan and early dynasties; by the 8th–9th c., Idrisids rose in Morocco.

Economy & Trade

• Coastal exports: grain, olive oil, wine, salted fish, purple dye; interior trade: salt, dates, gold, slaves, ivory; oasis produce and transshipment (Fezzan, Touat).

• Caravan systems matured between Fezzan ↔ Niger Bend/Lake Chad and Tripolitania/Cyrenaica ↔ Nile.

Technology & Material Culture

• Iron widespread; Roman engineering (roads, bridges, aqueducts; port moles).

• Oasis technologies: foggaras/khettaras, cisterns, terrace gardens; wheel-made ceramics, glass.

• Urban mosaics, Punic and Roman inscriptions; desert fortlets and tumuli fields.

Belief & Symbolism

• Punic religion (Baal Hammon–Tanit) across ports; Greek/Roman polytheism then Christianity in cities; Judaism in port communities;

• Amazigh (Berber) cults of springs, mountains, and ancestors persisted; Garamantian funerary landscapes extensive; Islam spread in the late centuries of this epoch.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Coastal breadbasket + oasis waterworks + caravan redundancy ensured stability; mixed agrarian–pastoral portfolios buffered shocks.

Transition

By 819 CE, North Africa was a polycentric frontier: Punic–Roman urban legacies, Garamantian oasis know-how, and rising Islamic–Amazigh polities formed the launching pad for the 9th–14th-century Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid/Hafsid/Zayyanid transformations to come.

East Europe (909–766 BCE): Chernoles Culture, Scythian Emergence, and Proto-Slavic Foundations

Between 909 and 766 BCE, East Europe—encompassing the territories of modern-day Belarus, Ukraine, and the European part of Russia—witnessed significant cultural and demographic transformations, marked especially by the prominence of the Chernoles culture and the early phases of Scythian dominance.

Political and Cultural Developments

Chernoles Culture and Proto-Slavic Identity

• The Chernoles culture (circa 1050–500 BCE), flourishing primarily between the Dniester and Dnieper Rivers, characterized this era. It represented settled agriculturalists whose way of life contrasted with neighboring nomadic peoples.

• Some scholars, including Maria Gimbutas, propose this culture as the early homeland of the proto-Slavs, seeing them as the ancestors of later Slavic-speaking peoples. Others prefer a more cautious interpretation, viewing the culture as a key developmental stage without assigning direct ethnic labels.

Emergence and Influence of Scythians

• This period also witnessed the initial emergence of nomadic peoples, commonly identified as early Scythians. Originating from Central Asia, they entered the Pontic steppe regions north of the Black Sea, beginning to exert pressure on established agricultural communities such as those associated with the Chernoles culture.

• Herodotus’s reference to "Scythian plowmen" corresponds geographically and culturally to populations within the Chernoles region, suggesting an early, nuanced relationship between nomadic Scythian warriors and settled agricultural peoples, possibly involving tributary or client relationships.

Uralic and Proto-Hungarian Migrations

• Around 1000 BCE, Uralic-speaking peoples, including the ancestors of the Hungarians, had begun migrating southwest from territories west of the Ural Mountains into regions that border modern East Europe. The proto-Hungarians gradually shifted from hunting and fishing toward nomadic cattle-herding.

Economic and Social Transformations

• The Chernoles communities relied predominantly on settled agriculture, cultivating grains and maintaining livestock. They constructed fortified settlements, indicating a social structure with emerging hierarchies and defensive concerns.

• By contrast, early Scythian groups were pastoralists, whose economy relied heavily on cattle, sheep, and horses, setting the stage for the region’s characteristic duality between nomadic pastoralists and settled agriculturalists.

Technological and Artistic Developments

• Iron metallurgy expanded during this period, enhancing agricultural tools and weaponry. The Chernoles people contributed significantly to regional technological developments, refining iron implements that would become central to Eastern European agrarian life.

• Early Scythian artistic expressions emerged, evident in burial practices and artifacts such as decorative horse trappings and weaponry, foreshadowing the rich artistic tradition known as the "Scythian animal style."

Long-Term Consequences and Historical Significance

The age from 909 to 766 BCE established foundational patterns in East Europe. The contrast between settled, proto-Slavic agricultural communities (Chernoles culture) and emerging nomadic, pastoral groups (Scythians) defined regional dynamics, influencing the cultural and demographic landscape for centuries to come. The early migration of Uralic-speaking proto-Hungarians into adjacent territories added further diversity, significantly shaping the ethnic and cultural complexity characteristic of later periods. These interactions and migrations laid crucial groundwork for the subsequent historical trajectory of East Europe.

The people who call themselves Saba' (biblical Sheba)" are both the earliest and the most abundantly attested in the surviving written records of Arabia.

The Sabaeans are a Semitic people who, at an unknown date, had entered southern Arabia from the north, imposing their Semitic culture on an aboriginal population.

Excavations in central Yemen suggest that the Sabaean civilization began as early as the tenth century BCE. (The Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon's court at the head of a camel caravan bearing gold, jewels, and spices in the Biblical account of his reign.)

Camels were evidently not in regular use as pack animals in caravans until the seventh century, but the story does provide evidence for the existence of important commercial relations between ancient Israel and Arabia.)

The Sabaean Kingdom establishes power in the early first millennium BCE.

Controlling a vital southern terminus for trade routes originating as far north as Mesopotamia, the Sabaeans trade with nations in the northern zones of Arabia, Canaan, and Syria.

The Aegean coast of Anatolia had been an integral part of a Minoan-Mycenean civilization (circa 2600-1200 BCE) that had drawn its cultural impulses from Crete.

Ionian Greek refugees during the Aegean region's so-called Dark Age (ca. 1050-800 BCE) flee across the sea to western Anatolia, at this time under Lydian rule, to escape the onslaught of the Dorians.

Aeolian territory stretches north of the Gediz (Hermus) River up to Pitane, with Cyme as the most important settlement.

According to Herodotus, by the eighth century BCE, the Aeolians' twelve most important cities are independent, and form a league (Dodecapolis): Cyme (also called Phriconis), Larissae, Neonteichos, Temnus, Cilla, Notion, Aegiroessa, Pitane, Aegae, Myrina, Gryneia, and Smyrna, the most celebrated of the cities.

Ephesus is founded as an Attic-Ionian colony on the Ayasuluk Hill, three kilometers from the center of ancient Ephesus, in the tenth century BCE (as attested by excavations at the Seljuq castle during the 1990s).

Tyre, which probably enjoys some primacy over the other cities of Phoenicia in the tenth and eleventh centuries, is ruled by kings whose power is limited by a merchant oligarchy.

The thirteenth-century BCE sarcophagus from Byblos (mentioned earlier in the text) is reused for King Hiram of Tyre in the tenth century BCE.

The Phoenician culture, a cosmopolitan blend of Egyptian, Anatolian, Greek and Mesopotamian influences in religion and literature, reaches its greatest height during this age.

The Bible names the notorious Jezebel, wife of King Ahab, as the daughter of Ethbaal, “king of Tyre and Sidon.” (The Old Testament also tells of Queen Jezebel employing the naturally occurring sulfide of antimony as a cosmetic to beautify her eyes.)

According to the Hebrew scriptures, the city of Tyre supplies cedars, carpenters, masons, and bronzesmiths for the kings of Israel.

A civilization of trade and agriculture flourishes in the second millennium BCE in Edom, the land to the south and east of ancient Israel (its people, the Edomites, traced by Biblical tradition to the patriarch Jacob's elder brother Esau).

The Edomites may have been connected with the Shasu and Shutu, nomadic raiders mentioned in Egyptian sources.

Indeed, a letter from an Egyptian scribe at a border fortress in the Wadi Tumilat during the reign of Merneptah reports movement of nomadic "shasu-tribes of Edom" to watering holes in Egyptian territory.

The earliest Iron Age settlements—possibly copper mining camps—date to the ninth century BCE.

The Edomites' original country, according to the Tanakh, stretches from the Sinai peninsula as far as Kadesh Barnea.

Southward, it reaches as far as Eilat, which is the seaport of Edom.

On the north of Edom is the territory of Moab.

The boundary between Moab and Edom is the Wadi Zered.

The ancient capital of Edom is Bozrah.

According to Genesis, Esau's descendants settled in this land after displacing the Horites.

It was also called the land of Seir; Mount Seir appears to have been strongly identified with them and may have been a cultic site.

In the time of Amaziah (838 BCE), Selah (Petra) is its principal stronghold, Eilat and Ezion-geber its seaports.

The rebuilding of Lachish, located in the Shephelah, or maritime plain of Philistia (Joshua 10:3, 5; 12:11), begins in the Early Iron Age around 900 BCE.

According to the Bible, the Israelites had captured and destroyed Lachish for joining the league against the Gibeonites (Josh. 10:31-33), but the territory was later assigned to the tribe of Judah (15:39).

Rehoboam is credited with rebuilding Lachish, establishing a palace above the earlier buildings of the Late Bronze Age, and fortifying the city with a double wall with buttresses and towers.

He also begins construction of a rock-cut water system (never completed).

Lachish under Rehoboam will become the second most important city of the kingdom of Judah.