The Iron Age was one of the most significant epochs in human history, and researchers may have uncovered the secrets of how we left the Bronze Age behind – via a 3,000-year-old smelting workshop called Kvemo Bolnisi, in southern Georgia.

This is a site that's been pored over before, but anthropological archaeologists Nathaniel Erb-Satullo and Bobbi Klymchuk, from Cranfield University in the UK, wanted to take a fresh look at the evidence.

The place was previously thought to have produced iron, due to the extensive amount of hematite (an iron oxide mineral) and slag waste (a byproduct of smelting) found there.

Using chemical analysis techniques and microscopic imagery, the researchers came to a different conclusion: iron oxide was actually being used as a flux , a substance add

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