I would have thought that with bronze being an alloy it would have been more difficult to work with than iron, so why was it the first to become widely used?
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Bronze can be melted and cast easily to make strong and durable tools and weapons; however when you cast iron, the process burns all the inherent carbon content in iron and and makes pure iron too soft to be useful. Iron needs to smelted which is a delicate and complicated process to get more carbon in itself and become harder and more durable than bronze. Also even you sucessfully introduced carbon to iron with smelting, iron still needs to go through forging and the heat treatment (another very complicated and delicate process) to finally become useful as a tool/weapon. In contrast to all those, you can cast a bronze tool in an open stone mould, wait it to cool down, polish it(or not), (maybe cold hammer the edges a little to toughen it) and start using it immediately. And bronze tools are very durable and when bent or damaged so easily fixable, unlike the britleness of early low carbon steel/iron that had many impurities within. Not to mention bronze dont really rust, and can be remelted and recast over and over again.
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