Iron

Pure iron is very rare on the Earth's crust, basically being limited to meteorites. Iron ores are quite abundant, but extracting usable metal from them requires kilns or furnaces capable of reaching 1500 °C or higher, about 500 °C higher than what is enough to smelt copper. Humans started to dominate that process in Eurasia only about 2000 BCE[not verified in body], and iron began to displace copper alloys for tools and weapons, in some regions, only around 1200 BCE. That event is considered the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Iron alloys, such as steel, inox, and special steels are now by far the most common industrial metals, because of their mechanical properties and their low cost.