[erlikhan]

What I remember is,he Azerbaijan museum had exactly the same type of bronze sword and they were dating it to something like b.c. 1500 and Schytians. I dont remember the link. As I said Ariel can give it again. Or if there is a way to see, it was in the previous forum, i guess under black sea yataghan topic.
About the metallurgy of nomads issue, how were the nomads like Turkic tribes,Magyars and Moghuls conquering huge lands in very short time, because of which advantage you think? By throwing stones very accurately? Iron and iron working was accepted something holy and by far the most used subject in Turkish legends.
And about iron-bronze subject, one must know that bronze and iron comparison can not be based on the improvement in unit quality of weapons, but total quantity. I read in several sources that, if iron was preferred instead of bronze , it was mainly because iron is very cheap and sources are plentiful everywhere, but zinc in bronze is rare and expensive. Some types of bronze cast is quite stronger than iron. Or there is nothing like, bronze technology is simple and iron technology is very complicated. After the development of simple method of iron forging,(you can melt iron even with just a big fire on a windy hill) everybody around immidiately turned their arms to iron mainly NOT because so they became able to produce stronger weapons, but they became able to produce much cheaper weapons ,so much more weapons with the same budget, which meant to have much more crowded armies.Schytians or anybody else should be just maniacs to insist on bronze weapons in years closer than 1000s b.c. They would vanish in a few days instead of conquering big areas.