Copper was the first metal that people learned to work. Lumps of native copper, found pure in the ground, were hammered into beads, pins and small tools in the Near East, with some of the earliest worked pieces coming from sites in Anatolia such as Cayonu. Smelting copper from its ores, which allowed far greater production, developed several thousand years later, with early evidence in the Balkans and the Near East from around the fifth millennium BCE. The metal gave its name to the Copper Age, or Chalcolithic, that bridged the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. Once copper was alloyed with tin to make bronze, around the fourth millennium BCE, it became the basis of tools, weapons and trade across much of Eurasia, and it remains vital today for electrical wiring.
Before and after
- from c. 7,101 BCE to 5,701 BCECatalhoyuk grows into a large Neolithic town
- from c. 7,090s BCE to 4,950s BCEOrigins of Jarmo
- 8th millennium BCEOrigins of Athens
- from 8th millennium BCE to 4th millennium BCEOrigins of Khirokitia
- 8th millennium BCEDiscovery of copper
- 71st century BCEMaize is domesticated in Mexico
- 71st century BCERice is domesticated in the Yangtze valley
- from c. 7,000 BCE to 586 BCEConstruction of Tel Megiddo
- from c. 7,000 BCE to 2,600 BCEOrigins of Mehrgarh
More in Science & technology
- 7th millennium BCEDiscovery of gold
- 6th millennium BCEDiscovery of iron
- c. 5,001 BCECopper is smelted in the Balkans
- 1766Discovery of hydrogen
- 1931Big Bang theory proposed
- 15 January 2001Wikipedia
The era
This moment belongs to the Human prehistory (300,000 years ago to 3,200 BCE), the human story before writing.