Practice question · Multiple choice
Why is "iron caused the fall of aristocracies" a claim to handle carefully?
Hints
- This course keeps warning about one particular trap.
- A door being opened is not the same as walking through it.
Show the answer
C. Iron made wider arming possible but decided nothing
Why
Technological determinism. Iron opened a door, a phalanx of farmers is affordable in a way a chariot elite is not, but Assyria walked through the same door toward the most frightening military machine yet seen. Technology makes possible; people decide.
Practise The Iron Age and the End of Prehistory
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More questions on The Iron Age and the End of Prehistory
- Complete the statement about the threshold.
- Sort each statement: supported, or an instance of technological determinism?
- Why is calling prehistory "the prologue to human history" a mistake about proportion?
- Why was the Phoenician alphabet as consequential as iron?
- The boundary between prehistory and history marks a real change in how people lived.
- The Phoenician alphabet had about 22 signs where cuneiform had hundreds. What did that reduction actually…
- What follows from an alphabet that ordinary people can learn?