page_title: History of technology
section_title: Copper and bronze Ages
hierarchical_section_title: History of technology / By period and geography / Ancient / Copper and bronze Ages
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Epée, bronze, âge du bronze, vers 800 av. JC&#160;???, musée des antiquités nationales, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
context_page_description: The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques and is one of the categories of world history. Technology can refer to methods ranging from as simple as stone tools to the complex genetic engineering and information technology that has emerged since the 1980s. The term technology comes from the Greek word techne, meaning art and craft, and the word logos, meaning word and speech. It was first used to describe applied arts, but it is now used to described advancements and changes which affect the environment around us.
  New knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors are made possible by technologies which assist humans in traveling to places they could not previously reach, and by scientific instruments by which we study nature in more detail than our natural senses allow.
  Since much of technology is applied science, technical history is connected to the history of science. Since technology uses resources, technical history is tightly connected to economic history. From those resources, technology produces other resources, including technological artifacts used in everyday life.
context_section_description: Metallic copper occurs on the surface of weathered copper ore deposits and copper was used before copper smelting was known.  Copper smelting is believed to have originated when the technology of pottery kilns allowed sufficiently high temperatures.  The concentration of various elements such as arsenic increase with depth in copper ore deposits and smelting of these ores yields arsenical bronze, which can be sufficiently work hardened to be suitable for making tools.  Bronze is an alloy of copper with tin; the latter being found in relatively few deposits globally caused a long time to elapse before true tin bronze became widespread. (See: Tin sources and trade in ancient times) Bronze was a major advance over stone as a material for making tools, both because of its mechanical properties like strength and ductility and because it could be cast in molds to make intricately shaped objects.
  Bronze significantly advanced shipbuilding technology with better tools and bronze nails.  Bronze nails replaced the old method of attaching boards of the hull with cord woven through drilled holes.  Better ships enabled long distance trade and the advance of civilization. 
  This technological trend apparently began in the Fertile Crescent and spread outward over time. These developments were not, and still are not, universal. The three-age system does not accurately describe the technology history of groups outside of Eurasia, and does not apply at all in the case of some isolated populations, such as the Spinifex People, the Sentinelese, and various Amazonian tribes, which still make use of Stone Age technology, and have not developed agricultural or metal technology.
caption: A late Bronze Age sword or dagger blade
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