Bronze Age
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze and proto-writing, and other features of urban civilization.
The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, for classifying and studying ancient societies. An ancient civilization can be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in western Asia before the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, but in some parts of the world, the Copper Age served as a transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic from outside the region except for Sub-Saharan Africa where it was developed independently.
Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia (cuneiform) and Egypt (hieroglyphs) developed the earliest viable writing systems.
See also
- Oxhide ingot
- Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures
- Middle Bronze Age migrations (Ancient Near East)
- Namazga V and Altyndepe
- Tin sources and trade in ancient times
Seafaring
- Dover bronze age boat — the earliest known seagoing plank-built vessel
- Ferriby Boats
- Langdon Bay hoard — see also Dover Museum