alt Hacker NewsThe claim is that bronze enabled complex, highly centralized states because it was rare (due to a dearth of tin). So only the connected/rich could afford it, and they used it to build empires/kingdoms/etc.
Iron wasn't superior to bronze (in the fact the article claims it was worse), but it was good enough and widespread. All you needed was a furnace with bellows, charcoal, and an iron source (which were everywhere). Since everyone had access to iron, no one person/group had an edge over the others and this prevented highly centralized polities from being established.
so economically speaking it was cheaper to mass produce iron weapons.. I would have assumed a first mover advantage. It would be surprising if iron tech sprung up everywhere at the same time. And sure smaller groups could do it, but some groups would do it better,faster, cheaper (paretto principle). They should have had a material advantage me thinks. Since its cheaper you could arm more people perhaps. Lastly, the current powers could have also adopted iron and armed larger armies.