Inventive Hittites hit mark
The inventive Hittites used fires made from coal, with the heat contained by mud bricks, to soften and work iron. This allowed them to make iron weapons that were far stronger than those previously made from bronze. People who possessed these new weapons were able to subjugate their neighbours and colonise their lands.
But the principles the Hittites used when working iron went back as far as 5000 BC, when people discovered that they could melt copper in the heat of carefully contained wood fires.
