page_title: Metal
section_title: Antiquity
hierarchical_section_title: Metal / History / Antiquity
caption_attribution_description: English: Poseidon (or Zeus) of Cape Artemision, National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Athens, Greece.
context_page_description: A metal is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typically malleable or ductile. A metal may be a chemical element such as iron; an alloy such as stainless steel; or a molecular compound such as polymeric sulfur nitride.
  In physics, a metal is generally regarded as any substance capable of conducting electricity at a temperature of absolute zero. Many elements and compounds that are not normally classified as metals become metallic under high pressures. For example, the nonmetal iodine gradually becomes a metal at a pressure of between 40 and 170 thousand times atmospheric pressure. Equally, some materials regarded as metals can become nonmetals. Sodium, for example, becomes a nonmetal at pressure of just under two million times atmospheric pressure.
  In chemistry, two elements that would otherwise qualify as brittle metals—arsenic and antimony—are commonly instead recognised as metalloids, on account of their chemistry. Around 95 of the 118 elements in the periodic table are metals.
context_section_description: The discovery of bronze (an alloy of copper with arsenic or tin) enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons, armor, and building materials such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone and copper ("Chalcolithic") predecessors. Initially, bronze was made of copper and arsenic (forming arsenic bronze) by smelting naturally or artificially mixed ores of copper and arsenic. The earliest artifacts so far known come from the Iranian plateau in the 5th millennium BCE. It was only later that tin was used, becoming the major non-copper ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BCE. Pure tin itself was first isolated in 1800 BCE by Chinese and Japanese metalworkers.
  Mercury was known to ancient Chinese and Indians before 2000 BCE, and found in Egyptian tombs dating from 1500 BCE.
  The earliest known production of steel, an iron-carbon alloy, is seen in pieces of ironware excavated from an archaeological site in Anatolia (Kaman-Kalehöyük) and are nearly 4,000 years old, dating from 1800 BCE.
  From about 500 BCE sword-makers of Toledo, Spain were making early forms of alloy steel by adding a mineral called wolframite, which contained tungsten and manganese, to iron ore (and carbon). The resulting Toledo steel came to the attention of Rome when used by Hannibal in the Punic Wars. It soon became the basis for the weaponry of Roman legions; their swords were said to have been "so keen that there is no helmet which cannot be cut through by them."
  In pre-Columbian America, objects made of tumbaga, an alloy of copper and gold, started being produced in Panama and Costa Rica between 300–500 CE. Small metal sculptures were common and an extensive range of tumbaga (and gold) ornaments comprised the usual regalia of persons of high status.
  At around the same time indigenous Ecuadorians were combining gold with a naturally-occurring platinum alloy containing small amounts of palladium, rhodium, and iridium, to produce miniatures and masks composed of a white gold-platinum alloy. The metal workers involved heated gold with grains of the platinum alloy until the gold melted at which point the platinum group metals became bound within the gold. After cooling, the resulting conglomeration was hammered and reheated repeatedly until it became as homogenous as if all of the metals concerned had been melted together (attaining the melting points of the platinum group metals concerned was beyond the technology of the day).
caption: The Artemision Bronze[n 7] showing either Poseidon or Zeus, c. 460 BCE, National Archaeological Museum, Athens. The figure is more than 2 m in height.
exif: {}