One hears about the iron age and the bronze age—eras in which people discovered metallurgy. But how did that happen? Was it like:
1. Look at rock
2. See shiny
3. Try to melt the shiny out of the rock
4. Profit?
Explain it to me!
In: 1643
All the easy to find copper nuggets that were on or near the surface were scooped up during the bronze age.
So, we have to use our imagination to speculate how copper nuggets got melted in a campfire.
Copper is shiney when rubbed and its eye-catching. It’s easy to see how it could have been used as a decoration at first.
If you hammer copper, it becomes harder at the place you hammer it, so it’s easy to speculate that working copper for a decoration would provide the “a-ha” moment when you could make a dagger or axe-head out of hammered copper, instead of stone.
Stone implements had to be made every time, and copper could be melted and re-cast into a shape in a sand mould, over and over.
It may have been a minor benefit over stone tools, but it was “better enough”, and I’m sure both materials lived side-by-side for quite a while.
There’s a long story as to the likely start to adding 15% tin to make bronze. That material has all the benefits of casting copper into sand-moulds, but it is much harder.
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