BRONZE MACE-
Balkan Peninsula, Macedonia. Near East Bronze age: 3,300 – 1,200 BC. 4 cm tall x 5.5 cm wide.
The development of pottery permitted the development of metal smelting, starting with copper–a relatively common metal with a low melting point. The Copper Age saw the first long distance trade in metal, particularly to Mesopotamia, which had rich soils but not much else. The land between the rivers could produce food, and thus people, in sufficient numbers to sustain complex, highly organised societies and so considerable elite demand operating from surpluses extracted from peasant farmers. It also had plenty of clay for pottery and writing on tablets. Other goods, particularly metal, it had to trade for. If you add tin to copper you produce bronze, a harder and more durable alloy than copper on its own. The Bronze Age begins around 3600BC in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, around 3300 BC in the Indus Valley, around 3200BC in the Aegean, spreading slowly across Europe (by 1800BC in Central Europe, by 1300 BC the Atlantic coast), around 3150BC in Egypt and around 3000BC in China. From around 2300 BC, there is a flourishing Bronze Age civilization in the Upper Oxus.
Balkan Peninsula, Macedonia. Near East Bronze age: 3,300 – 1,200 BC. 4 cm tall x 5.5 cm wide.
The development of pottery permitted the development of metal smelting, starting with copper–a relatively common metal with a low melting point. The Copper Age saw the first long distance trade in metal, particularly to Mesopotamia, which had rich soils but not much else. The land between the rivers could produce food, and thus people, in sufficient numbers to sustain complex, highly organised societies and so considerable elite demand operating from surpluses extracted from peasant farmers. It also had plenty of clay for pottery and writing on tablets. Other goods, particularly metal, it had to trade for. If you add tin to copper you produce bronze, a harder and more durable alloy than copper on its own. The Bronze Age begins around 3600BC in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, around 3300 BC in the Indus Valley, around 3200BC in the Aegean, spreading slowly across Europe (by 1800BC in Central Europe, by 1300 BC the Atlantic coast), around 3150BC in Egypt and around 3000BC in China. From around 2300 BC, there is a flourishing Bronze Age civilization in the Upper Oxus.