Search Results - Bronze Age

The Bronze Age of a culture is the period when the most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use) in that culture utilised bronze. This could either have been based on the local smelting of copper and tin from ores, or (as in Scandinavia) trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Many, though not all, bronze age cultures flourished in prehistory.

The naturally occurring ores typically included arsenic as a common impurity. Copper/tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in western Asia before 3000 BC. The Bronze Age is regarded as the second part of a three-age system for prehistoric societies, though there are some cultures that have extensive written records during their Bronze Ages. In this system, in some areas of the world the Bronze Age followed the Neolithic age. However in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Neolithic age was directly followed by the Iron Age. In some parts of the world, a Copper Age followed the Neolithic Age and preceded the Bronze Age.

The place and time of the invention of bronze are controversial. It is possible that bronzing was invented independently in the Maykop culture in the North Caucasus as far back as the mid 4th millennium BC, which would make them the makers of the oldest known bronze; however, others date the same Maykop artifacts to the mid 3rd millennium BC. However, the Maykop culture only had arsenic bronze, which is a naturally occurring alloy. Tin bronze, which developed later, requires more sophisticated production techniques tin has to be mined (mainly as the tin ore cassiterite) and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make the bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of heavy usage of metals.