by Angel Sosa

Created on: October 24, 2010

The Bronze Age, exactly what did this age comprise of? Well, this age was the second age of three part prehistorically era classified as the “Three-Age System“. The term was coined by Christian J. Thomsen in 1843. The Three-Age System was an inspired idea from Videl-Simonson in 1813. The Three-Age system consisted of The Stone Age, The Bronze Age and finally

The Iron Age, sequentially. These ages were so named because of the constructive use of the materials, at the time, to create tools and weapons. The archaic Stone Age was characterized by the widespread use of stone. The Bronze age was set due to the use of Bronze metallurgy, and The Iron Age was character by the use of Iron metallurgy.

The marvelous time period of The Bronze Age, started as The Stone Age (Neolithic era [10,000 b.c. - 3,800 b.c.])began to close. This period of time encompassed altogether from 3,800 b.c. to 1,200 b.c. The Bronze age was split triply into, The Early Bronze Age (3,800 b.c. - 2,000 b.c.), The Middle Bronze Age (2,000 b.c.- 1,600 b.c) and the Late Bronze Age (1,600 b.c. - 1,200 b.c.). The reason this era is so marvelous and distinct was because for the first time in history, we saw a progression out of the stone-making ages, and into the use of metals for the first time. Not only did we see just one metal used, it was a combination of tin and copper which made bronze, a stronger alloy than simply using copper or tin.

The special thing about the use of bronze, is that it is re-workable. If a stone weapon-maker created a war hammer from stone, sure its durable, but if it takes its amount of beatings, then it may eventually break, shatter, or crumble, therefore making it non-reusable; he/she would have to make another one from scratch. Say that this same smith creates a bronze war hammer and torques it, twists it, bends it, distorts it or beats it to smithereens; the end result is that he/she could melt it back down, and rework it into the original form it once had. This was impractical to even think that the Stone Age people in the era preceding to the Bronze Age could heat flint, melt it into lava, pour it into a container that could hold lava and re-morph this rock back into something large enough to etch back into a weapon. Lets look at the statistics here: In order to melt flint (a Stone Age element of choice) a caveman would have had to find a way to get something up to 3100° Fahrenheit/1700° Celsius. The melting point of copper is 1724° f/940°

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