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The history of copper use dates to 9000 BC in the Middle East; [89] a copper pendant was found in northern Iraq that dates to 8700 BC. [90] Evidence suggests that gold and meteoric iron (but not smelted iron) were the only metals used by humans before copper. [91]
The earliest gold artifacts were discovered at the site of Wadi Qana in the Levant. [13] Silver is estimated to have been discovered in Asia Minor shortly after copper and gold. [14] There is evidence that iron was known from before 5000 BC. [15] The oldest known iron objects used by humans are some beads of meteoric iron, made in Egypt in ...
Reconstruction of Ötzi's copper axe (c. 3300 BCE). The Copper Age, also called the Eneolithic or the Chalcolithic Age, has been traditionally understood as a transitional period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, in which a gradual introduction of the metal (native copper) took place, while stone was still the main resource utilized.
Copper was probably the first metal mined and crafted by humans. [6] It was originally obtained as a native metal and later from the smelting of ores. Earliest estimates of the discovery of copper suggest around 9000 BC in the Middle East. It was one of the most important materials to humans throughout the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages.
A copper axe found at Prokuplje, Serbia contains the oldest securely dated evidence of copper-making, c. 5500 BC (7,500 years ago). [16] The find in June 2010 extends the known record of copper smelting by about 800 years, and suggests that copper smelting may have been invented in separate parts of Asia and Europe at that time rather than ...
It has a history of use that is at least 10,000 years old, and estimates of its discovery place it at 9000 BC in the Middle East; [1] a copper pendant was found in northern Iraq that dates to 8700 BC. [2] There is evidence that gold and meteoric iron (but not iron smelting) were the only metals used by humans before copper. [3]
The first evidence of this extractive metallurgy dates from the 6th and 5th millennia BC, and was found in the archaeological sites of the Vinča culture, Majdanpek, Jarmovac and Pločnik in Serbia. [9] The earliest copper smelting is found at the Belovode site; [10] these examples include a copper axe from 5500 BC. [11]
The heating of copper and its shaping with hammers began around 5,000 BCE. [citation needed] Melting and casting started around 4,000 BCE. Metallurgy had its dawn with the reduction of copper from its ore around 3,500 BCE. The first alloy, bronze came into use around 3,000 BCE. [citation needed]