Copper-Bronze Age – Anthropology Notes – For W.B.C.S. Examination.

তামা-ব্রোঞ্জের বয়স – নৃবিদ্যা নোট – WBCS পরীক্ষা।

The cultural record of man’s existence is divided into two great periods – the ‘Age of Stone’ and the ‘Age of Metal’. The ‘Age of Stone’ preceded the ‘Age of metal’. The duration of these two periods was not equal. The Stone Age persisted far and far greater period than the Metal Age whereas metal came in use only recently.Continue Reading Copper-Bronze Age – Anthropology Notes – For W.B.C.S. Examination.

It was first used in Asia and Egypt about 3500 BC, and in Europe about 2000 BC. Once the use of metal was recognized, the art of writing, the city-life and also an infinite variety of inventions took place which contributed to the rise of human civilization. Metal enhanced man’s mastery with stone, wood, bone and other substances.

1. Copper Age:

Copper first appeared in the Old World particularly in Mesopotamia. Some copper tools occurred with the late, improved Neolithic implements in the floor of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in Mesopotamia. The floor of this valley at the head of the Persian Gulf had just risen above sea level when the first people came down from the Persian highlands, about 4000 BC with the culture known as Ubaid.

Those people began to drain the swamps and founded towns. A Spear-point made of native copper appeared in A1 Ubaid III period at Ur of the Chaldea. For the earliest Mesopotamians copper was scarce, still a few more implements were found there. Such findings suggested that copper implements came into use in Mesopotamia between 4000 BC and 3500 BC.

The first copper tools from native copper ore were made in the same manner as the stone tools were made in Neolithic Age. Pounding i.e. application of the method of cold hammering drew the shapes. The implements include simple flat axes and daggers. The nature as well as the limited number of the tools suggests that the people of the particular period did not know the art of smelting, casting or molding.

Knowledge of copper came to Egypt and the Asiatic coasts of the Mediterranean from Chaldea. In Egypt, a pin and two beads have been found as belonging to the Badarian period, just after 4000 BC. As we meet with copper at the foundation of early civilization, so it is likely that in later period knowledge of copper spread to the other regions from its center of discovery.

As per the deduction, the principal types of copper implements reaching to Egypt and Asiatic coasts of the Mediterranean, advanced further into the Mediterranean islands and thereafter into the Western and perhaps even into the Central and Northern Europe.

But by that time the nature of the implements became modified. Neolithic culture of respective region influenced them, although the principal characters were retained. However, copper reached to Gaul simultaneously from the South and the East crossing Black Sea and Aegean civilization.

Naturally it took a long time to reach British Isles and Scandinavia. Thus implements made of native copper had been in use for a considerable time in almost all countries including Asia, Europe and Africa, excepting a few countries like Japan, Oceania, etc.

Copper occurs in a native state as pure metal in many parts of the world. It also comes in various ores being mixed with rocks and other metals. But as it was hard for the early people to extract copper from the ores, they avoided using of the ores and liked to work on native copper which were widely found in the form of small masses and nuggets.

Large masses were of limited occurrence. However, the small lumps of copper, scattered on the surface of the ground used to be picked up for making implements. The earliest method of metalworking, the cold hammering, was very simple. The pieces of native copper were hammered in order to flatten them out into various shapes.

2. Bronze Age:

Alloying as a higher metal working technique appeared at the end of the Copper Age. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. In contrast to copper, the malleable soft metal, bronze possesses a superior quality of hardness. Tin has to be mixed with copper in a proportion of about one-tenth to produce bronze. A higher percentage of tin renders the alloy increasingly brittle. However, bronze predominated between the Copper Age and the Iron Age and therefore this particular period has been referred as Bronze Age.

Several types of bronze were found in the Bronze Age. Everywhere copper was the principal material. A small admixture of tin, phosphorous, arsenic or even sometimes the gold or silver is used with it. Copper-tin mixtures were found most widespread. Some good quality of bronze appeared in the Early Dynastic period in Egypt, close to 3000BC.

Some of the pre-historians believe that the entire bronze technique was percolated from outside, probably being cultivated by the people of the mountainous regions of Asia Minor and Armenia who later came to Egypt in search of raw materials. But the fact is far from proved to everyone’s satisfaction. Those who believe bronze ted in South Russia around 3000BC, advocated a rapid spread to East Europe, Near East and North India by 2500BC. Whatever may be, once the invention occurred, it was utilized effectively in different adjacent regions.

Since the copper-bearing strata are much more widely spread over the surface of the globe than those bearing tin, copper was discovered first and then tin. Archaeologists debate as to whether bronze was prepared by measuring out the proportion of the two elements in the metallic state or whether the ores were mixed up before putting them into the furnace.

By these hypotheses they wanted to explain the notable differences in the quality of the bronze arising from difference of tin content in the bronze. Not only the tin, a very small proportion of arsenic, antimony or zinc can modify the molecular shape of copper.

Ancient metal workers through their experience understood the varied properties of amalgamated metals. Because they found some copper ores produced a metal that cast better and naturally that particular kind of metal made better and harder implements than others. Thus the early workers became conscious about the nature of the ores.

Gradually they understood that copper as a metal is rarely available in the natural state but abundantly found in various ores being mixed with rocks and other metals as copper sulphides, copper oxides, copper carbonates, etc. The metallic copper in ores is formed as a result of a prolonged contact of the outcropping copper veins and lodes with the atmosphere.

The most common compound is the copper carbonate (malachite). It was often grounded up to use as a green paint and regarded as the best source of metallic copper. Another kind of copper carbonate, which gave the blue colour, is called azurite. Besides, there are two forms of copper oxide—cuprite and melacouite and many sulpides of copper. As sulphide ores occur in deep veins and hard to find out, early people did not use them much. They have been the chief source of the metal only in recent days.

Early men first picked up the nodules of native copper either to get paint or to make an ornament. Primitive metal workers never went in search of great, concentrated deposits, not even in the period of Bronze Age when industrial use of the copper reached to the peak. However, there were many surface deposits throughout Asia and the mountainous regions of the Near East.

In Europe also, they were abundant. But the best sources are believed to be situated in Cyprus, Hungary and Spain. In Africa, the largest number of deposits is scattered in the Katanga region of the Belgian Congo and it is not known that whether they were worked before the Middle Ages.

The Tin which is essentially required for bronze, was not readily available in past. Tin-bearing strata are actually rare as well as limited to a few localities. Tin ores occur in the original deposits in veins and in the form of small crystals in the crystalline rocks known as granulite’s; it is always an oxide called cassiterite and never found as a native metal.

Moreover, as cassiterite looks like a heavy dark sand, it does not seem to be a metallic substance and so very difficult to be identified. Small and moderate deposits occur in Armenia, Syria, North-West Persia and Bengal. Large deposits are only found in Malay Peninsula, in South-East Africa and China. The principal European sources are Bohemia, Spain and the British Isles. In Africa, same old tin mines have been reported from the Northern Nigeria and Transvaal but their age is not certain.

The attrition of rock-matrices and outcropping veins by atmospheric agencies produced alluvial formations in which stream-tin occurs in the form of sand. It is only necessary to wash this alluvium in order to extract the cassiterite. This method was used in the exploitation of tin in Malaya, at Brangka, Perak, etc. places. The first metallurgists found the beds of copper and tin in a virgin state. They simply dealt with oxides and used a reducing fire of charcoal to separate the metal. This metallurgical process is still utilized in Malay with the primitive furnaces or smelting hearths.

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