Age of Iron

Necessity inspires industry. Leather will be a short commodity. Both wild and domestic animals are in very few numbers. People ate all the cattle generations before. The same is true for most textiles. Cotton and flax take great expanses of irrigated land something better used for what limited food production may still exist. Still, there will be Iron. Future societies will have the advantage of a past civilization's easily accessible iron scrap. Therefore, unlike the Greeks, the new beginnings will bypass the Bronze Age. It will be an age of iron.

Painting based in part on the Greek myth, “Hephaestus”.

Hephaestus was the Greek god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. Like other mythic smiths but unlike most other gods, Hephaestus was lame, which gave him a grotesque appearance in Greek eyes. He served as the blacksmith of the gods, and he was worshiped in the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, particularly in Athens.