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In China, early tin was extracted along the Yellow River in Erlitou and Shang times between 2500 and 1800 BC. By Han and later times, China imported its tin from what is today Yunnan province. This has remained China's main source of tin throughout history and into modern times. [49]
Tin mining began early in the Bronze Age, as bronze is a copper-tin alloy. Tin is a relatively rare element in the Earth's crust, with approximately 2 ppm (parts per million), compared to iron with 50,000 ppm.
Tin was first smelted in combination with copper around 3500 BC to produce bronze - and thus giving place to the Bronze Age (except in some places which did not experience a significant Bronze Age, passing directly from the Neolithic Stone Age to the Iron Age). [18]
Bronze has also been used in coins; most "copper" coins are actually bronze, with about 4 percent tin and 1 percent zinc. [45] As with coins, bronze has been used in the manufacture of various types of medals for centuries, and "bronze medals" are known in contemporary times for being awarded for third place in sporting competitions and other ...
Tin mining was further developed in Bangka in the 18th century, with migrant workers from China working the mines. [2] Large tin deposits were further discovered in 1823 at the neighboring island of Belitung, and Billiton Maatschappij (today part of BHP) was founded to exploit Belitung's tin, obtaining a concession over the island's mineral ...
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Bronze was an important advance because it had the edge-durability and stiffness that pure copper lacked. Until the advent of iron, bronze was the most advanced metal for tools and weapons in common use (see Bronze Age for more detail).
What could be defined as a basic Phoenician metal “kit” is composed mainly of the “Irano–Scythian” shape of three winged and socketed arrowheads made mainly of tin bronze, sometimes with arsenic and/or lead and left as-cast, and “hand”-like decorated fibulae made of good quality (7 wt%–12 wt% Sn) tin bronze and lead (up to 17 wt ...
A study in the journal Antiquity from 2013 reporting the discovery of a tin bronze foil from the Pločnik archaeological site dated to c. 4,650 BC, as well as 14 other artefacts from Bulgaria and Serbia dated to before 4,000 BC, showed that early tin bronze was more common than previously thought and developed independently in Europe 1,500 ...