Smelting in the context of "Iron Age"

The Bronze Age is an archaeological and anthropological term defining a phase in the development of material culture among ancient societies in Asia, the Near East and Europe. An ancient civilisation is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age if it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from producing areas elsewhere. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of the three-age system, following the Stone Age and preceding the Iron Age. Conceived as a global era, the Bronze Age follows the Neolithic ("New Stone") period, with a transition period between the two known as the Chalcolithic ("copper-Stone") Age. These technical developments took place at different times in different places, and therefore each region's history is framed by a different chronological system.

Bronze Age cultures were the first to develop writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia, which used cuneiform script, and Egypt, which used hieroglyphs, developed the earliest practical writing systems. In the archaeology of the Americas, a five-period system is conventionally used instead, which does not include a Bronze Age, though some cultures there did smelt copper and bronze. No evidence of metalworking has been found on the Australian continent prior to the establishment of European settlements in 1788.

The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make stone tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, with the advent of metalworking. Because of its enormous timescale, it encompasses 99% of human history.

Though some simple metalworking of malleable metals, particularly the use of gold and copper for purposes of ornamentation, was known in the Stone Age, it is the melting and smelting of copper that marks the end of the Stone Age. In Western Asia, this occurred by about 3000 BC, when bronze became widespread. The term Bronze Age is used to describe the period that followed the Stone Age, as well as to describe cultures that had developed techniques and technologies for working copper alloys (bronze: originally copper and arsenic, later copper and tin) into tools, supplanting stone in many uses.

Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orange color. Copper is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, as a building material, and as a constituent of various metal alloys, such as sterling silver used in jewelry, cupronickel used to make marine hardware and coins, and constantan used in strain gauges and thermocouples for temperature measurement.

Copper is one of the few native metals, meaning metals that occur naturally in a directly usable, unalloyed metallic form. This led to very early human use in several regions, from c. 8000 BC. Thousands of years later, it was the first metal to be smelted from sulfide ores, c. 5000 BC; the first metal to be cast into a shape in a mold, c. 4000 BC; and the first metal to be purposely alloyed with another metal, tin, to create bronze, c. 3500 BC.

In cultural anthropology and cultural geography, cultural diffusion, as conceptualized by Leo Frobenius in his 1897/98 publication "Der westafrikanische Kulturkreis",is the spread of cultural items—such as ideas, styles, art,religions, technologies, languages—between individuals, whether within a single culture or from one culture to another.It is distinct from the diffusion of innovations within a specific culture. Examples of cultural diffusion include the spread of the war chariot and of iron smelting in ancient times, and the use of automobiles and Western business suits in the 20th century.

Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals in order to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term, it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale: from huge ships, buildings, and bridges, down to precise engine parts and delicate jewellery.

The historical roots of metalworking predate recorded history; its use spans cultures, civilizations and millennia. It has evolved from shaping soft, native metals like gold with simple hand tools, through the smelting of ores and hot forging of harder metals like iron, up to and including highly technical modern processes such as machining and welding. It has been used as an industry, a driver of trade, individual hobbies, and in the creation of art; it can be regarded as both a science and a craft.