QOTD: WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST INTERESTING HISTORICAL BATTLE?

as well as imaginary. steel swords evolved very slowly as blacksmiths slowly learned some methods of producing stronger iron – it was centuries before they had worked out a reliable process for what today we would call case hardening, and centuries more for there to be any widespread theories about how or why it worked. Meanwhile cheap swords were made of iron, not steel, which was an inferior material to bronze in almost all aspects except price. There was no single battle where steel versus bronze settled the outcome, but rather an era many generations long where starting from the bottom ranks, iron weapons replaced bronze weapons.
Also, swords in ancient times were not used in swordfights the way we think of them from the movies or even from the middle ages onward. Sword on sword clashing and banging around, was not the typical use – tactics in part dictated by the unsuitability of bronze swords to that kind of combat, and which tactics evolved very slowly lagging behind the emergence of iron swords by centuries. Look at bronze age and iron age swords. The majority of them are short (2-3 feet long) and are either optimized for thrusting _or_ for chopping, but almost never shaped to be able to do both. The chopping swords were much more like machetes than swords as we think of them today- single cutting edge, often curved downward into the direction of the cut, often a bit heavier/wider right around the typical area of impact for some more inerta there. Most sword work was chopping and hacking and was the second or third weapon to bring out after arrows and spears had been used. thrusting swords might be better considered as long daggers or bayonets than what we think of as swords.
Read ancient accounts of fighting. The spear, either a short javelin like spear (ultimate form the roman pilium) or a long pike like spear (ultimate form , greek phalanx fighting) was considered the first and most important weapon. The sword was more a sidearm, or else took on a ceremonial role for e.g. officers and high ranking brass.
There were a few swords in ancient times which did sort of remind us of our concept of swords and which seem to have been more suited to fighting with one the way we would think more sword-like- those are ironically bronze age swords, not iron!
The way we consider swords today evolved in the last years of the decline of the roman world. Yes by then iron blades were reliably carburized to make a kind of steel. Roman swords were almost always short and optimized for stabbing rather than chopping, greek swords were more often chopping swords. The barbarian invasions saw a shift in tactics and a shift in styles of swords to eventually favor longer two-sided slashing swords which we consider rightly to be typical of the middle ages. Until the late middle ages, though, steel was a mystery. meteoric iron was more prized for a sword (its high nickel content making it much tougher and the mysterious cosmic aspect never failed to impress) until the famous ‘damascus’ and later in the renaissance ‘toledo’ etc steels became more widespread. long thin duelling and piercing swords like rapiers were only possible after steel was good enough that they wouldnt deform or break in use, especially for poking through the gaps in plate armor. but by then nobody had seen a bronze sword in maybe close to two thousand years.