There are strong arguments in favor of one main area, somewhere within the Ore Crescent of North Syria, Cilicia, and the Iranian mountains, encompassing ancient cultural centers, where copper metallurgy -- and subsequently the metallurgy of iron -- originated and dispersed to the western and northern parts of the Old World. The origins of iron metallurgy are apparently coincidental with the large-scale smelting of sulfide copper ores together with iron ore fluxes to obtain easily fusible FeO-rich slags. This was first practiced during the Near Eastern Bronze Age -- 4th-3rd millennia BC. In Asia Minor and adjoining areas the second millennium BC witnessed the systematic production of the new metal. The major advancement in the technology of iron smelting and smithing took place in the La Tene period -- the latter half of the first millennium BC -- in the Celtic areas to which belonged the western regions of Czechoslovakia. An important chapter in the history of iron in the territory of Czechoslovakia is that of Slavic bloomery production. -- AATA