The History of Technology - The Bronze age

Bronze Age It is generally agreed that the first metal widely utilized by humans was copper. Dating all the way back to the Neolithic period (Around 8000BC), copper was in use even during the height of the Stone Age. The only thing stopping its widespread adoption was the lack of ability to reliably and consistently extract it from its ores.This changed with an increase in our metallurgical abilities, allowing us to cast the incredibly useful metal into various shapes. At this time, the widest use case for copper was simply replacing the stone tools more susceptible to wear with copper alternatives.Copper was not tough enough to truly be an epoch defining material in itself. That honour fell to Bronze. An alloy of copper and tin, bronze displayed the resistance to wear of copper and a toughness its component metal alone failed to produce. Different blends, methods of manufacture, and additives produced a variety of physical properties. Thus was ushered in the Bronze Age.This is the period in which writing systems began to emerge, thereby allowing our ancestors to record their stories for the generations to come. Egypt, Mesopotamia and Mycenaean Greece, the three civilizations most studied by western scholars got their beginnings at this point in time. Swords, a purpose built tool of war, the wheel, that allowed an incredible expansion of useable space, and several other notable advances were recorded at this point in time. Empires rose and fell on the back of bronze.The Bronze Age ended in the Mediterranean region fairly rapidly, archeologically speaking. Where other periods in time would gradually peter off over centuries, the Bronze Age fell in merely decades in an event known as the Bronze Age collapse. It is currently unknown the precise cause of this collapse. One theory some posit is that it may have been the result of continuous raids on the economic centres of various empires by what were known as the sea peoples, some say it was a dwindling supply of copper or tin, component materials of Bronze, some say it was other forces or a combination of several of these. All we know is that the age ended rather abruptly in around 1200BC and lead to the loss of several technologies and knowledge that would not be regained until centuries later.

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