Number of words – 344

Imagine how surprised the first Neolithic farmer must have been when he hit a pebble with his stone hammer and instead of shattering, the pebble just bent. A nugget of native copper!

Copper does sometimes occur pure, in small nuggets. By banging away at it our Neolithic hero could form it into a small figurine. Such small copper pieces including beads, are known from before 6000 BC. The small amounts of native copper available gave people a chance to learn some of the properties of copper that it was ductile; that it became brittle after repeated working; that it could be softened again in an open fire, and could be worked upon , perhaps to give a sharp edge. Such small amounts of native copper would not have had much practical use and the fact copper melts at above 1100 C would not have been stumbled upon easily.

It is likely that the next step in metallurgy the smelting of copper ore occurred first in a pottery kiln. Since copper is a relatively soft metal it does not hold an edge well. Copper makes a good enough hammer, but not a very good axe. Some hardening could be achieved by alternately hammering and heating.

But by about 3000 BC, metallurgists had learned to mix copper with arsenic, lead, or tin to produce bronze. By adding 5% to 15% of a second mineral to the copper, they could make much tougher tools. However, bronze was largely limited to weapons of war and to religious vessels. Cost is no object to soldiers and priest.

Ordinary artisans still used stone tools in most of their work. But environment they worked in was changing. Since resources are distributed unevenly over the earth’s surface, some Neolithic villages were better endowed with resources than others as farming communities grew and spread, trade in specialized goods gradually increased villages that did well in that trade could expand. Some villages were getting big enough to be called towns.

Excerpted from ‘Children of Promotheus: A history of Science and Technology’ by James McLachlan