Reminds me of "Bronze orientation day" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ

Beat you to it. ;0)

Iron was a thing before the iron age, too. We just didn't have a cheap or scalable way to produce viable ore.

This idea doesn't work, I think; the timing isn't right.

As I recall, both Drews and Cline go into this theory in more detail and dismiss it.

It seems to just barely be in time: Again, from wikipedia: "In Anatolia and the Caucasus, or Southeast Europe, the Iron Age began during the late 2nd millennium BC (c. 1300 BC).[3] In the Ancient Near East, this transition occurred simultaneously with the Late Bronze Age collapse, during the 12th century BC (1200–1100 BC)."

There could be additional contributing causes of course.

The thing is that early iron was expensive, wasn't of high quality and didn't fare much better than bronze swords/armor, and there's essentially no evidence that the sea people had iron weapons.

Bronze, though, was also not just expensive, it was also in practice tightly controlled because it depends on tin and copper which had to come from elsewhere - in particular tin, which seems to be mainly sourced from Cornwall and Devon (or in any case definitely not available locally and would have to be transported by, probably, something guild-like). Whereas iron, as soon as means of production had reached "good enough" levels, made it possible to bypass all of that. It didn't even have to be particularly good quality. When burger joints pop up everywhere then the single family-owned restaurant suffers, or bankrupts.

Missing evidence of iron weapons among the sea people is more of a concern. But we still don't know why people became "sea people", but as I understand it a common theory is that it was due to an economic collapse which had already happened. So, the hypothesis is that the economic collapse could be (at least partly) related to the emergence of iron and its impact on the bronze cartels. Whatever the cause, the bronze age collapse as well as the origin of the sea people is very interesting.

Tin was also sourced from what is now Afghanistan.

My intuition on the "Sea People" issue is that there was both push and pull. A people change their way of life when the old way becomes less attractive (the push) and a new way becomes more attractive (the pull). The first effect could be due to environmental conditions and failure of trade, the second could be due to exposed vulnerability of the existing order of things to exploitation (the Drews theory). Positive feedback could occur on both.

At the time and in the relevant area (eastern Mediterranean), arsenical bronze was still popular which, while dangerous to create, was easy to create and didn't require tin.

"Simultaneously" meaning +/- a few centuries. As much time passed between 1300 BC and 1100 BC as between the first steam locomotive and the founding of facebook.

That’s interesting—IIRC it is one of the main “pop history” theories. Of course what that means, I have no idea, we (non-academics) usually misunderstand history.

Just out of curiosity, because I don't know and don't know how I would look it up.

what prevents bronze from being "worked nearly everywhere by nearly everyone" or to put it another way what make iron easier to work?

If you had asked me I would have said the opposite. bronze is nice and easy to work while iron requires much hotter fires and harder implements.

The issue with bronze is the scarcity of tin (or the toxicity of arsenic, if one is making arsenical bronze).

But yeah, one can just cast bronze much more easily than one can cast iron. The melting point of bronze is about 200 to 300 C lower (and 500 C lower than cast steel.)