Metal is essential in our world but how did early humans noticed that that shiny “rock” is usefull
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Imagine you live in the Stone Age. After a rainy night, you come out of your shelter and notice this puddle of brown mud. It is a sunny day and you are going to do some hunting. When you get back, you notice that the brown mud has become hard and you realize that when wet you can mold it to any shape and then let it dry in the sun for it to harden. Congratulations, you discovered how to use clay.
Soon you realize you can speed the process using fire to harden the clay.
One faithful day, you are admiring the last piece of clay you created and notice something different, like a line with a different colour embedded in the clay and it seems harder. You just discovered a trace of copper.
From there, it doesn’t take you long to figure out how to look for traces of copper in clay and/or dirt in general. You start a process of trial and error to separate the traces of copper from the dirt, and from there you start experimenting with other traces in the dirt/clay/rock and start a process of trial and error to mix the traces. The dawn of metallurgy has begun.
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