The Bronze Age in Asia Minor
The Bronze Age in Asia Minor
As we have seen, copper is a soft and malleable metal. These properties made it possible for early civilizations to discover copper and to discover how to form it into containers, tools, ornaments and weapons. However, copper is so malleable that it doe s not hold an edge for long. However, the addition of a small amount of the metal tin to the molten copper creates an alloy (a combination of metals) that is much harder and holds a better edge. This alloy is called bronze.
Tin deposits are much less common than copper deposits. None of Egypt's copper or gold deposits were near tin deposits. Thus it was that Egypt did not use bronze until the 18th Dynasty. In the land that is now the nation of Iran, there are abundant copper deposits even today. There also were associated deposits of tin. It is fortunate that the great pioneering metallurgists of the ancient world, the people of Mesopotamia, stumbled over a combination of copper and tin. The Sumerians were the first civilization to use bronze in commerce.
Early bronze varied in tin content, with other metal impurities mixed in, such as lead, zinc and antimony. The impurities, metals that often are found with copper in nature, tell us that the formula for bronze was probably a lucky discovery stemming f rom the melting of impure ore. Later experience showed that the best bronze consisted of about 90% copper and 10% tin.
In order to be successful miners and metallurgists,
the Sumerians also became the world's first mineralogists. They
cataloged over 150 minerals. They learned that the mineral that
was t he source of tin is the mineral cassiterite,
a tin oxide.
The availability of bronze spurred trade and warfare. The ancient civilizations developed partly to make it possible to get copper and to work it, in order to protect, improve, and expand their civilization. Mining and trade were needed to obtain copper and tin, armies were needed to protect the mines and t he shipments of copper and tin, markets were needed for the trade goods, and industry was needed to generate goods to trade for copper. The relative boom times of the Bronze Age are due to the steps taken to fill these needs.
Around 2350 B.C., a warrior king named Sargon I conquered the warring city-states of Sumer and united them to the kingdom of Akkad. His dynasty collapsed in civil war about 2150 B.C. The city of Babylon rose to be the most powerful state in the region, ruled by Hammurabi, in about 1900 B.C. It was succeeded by the empire of Assyria.
Troy, the city destroyed in Homer's epic story, The
Iliad, also used bronze, as did its Greek (actually,
Mycenaean) conquerors. Troy was situated where a river flowed
into the Mediterranean . With access both to sea and land trade
routes, it was an important center in the Bronze trade. Bronze
continued to be the most important metal in the ancient world for
about 1500 years, until weapons of iron displaced it in about
1000 B.C.
The Mycenaeans were conquered by the Acheans in 1300 B.C. The Acheans are the true Greeks of antiquity. They assimilated into Mycenean society. Competition with Troy arose over trade. Troy was only one of a series of cities built on the hill of His sarlik. It was destroyed by the Myceneans around 1200 B.C. Homer's tale of the war, The Iliad, was not written until 800 B.C.
Late in the Bronze Age, the Phoenicians became the most important metalworkers and traders of the Mediterranean world. Their origins are shrouded in mystery. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, they were descended from immigrants from the Per sian Gulf or Babylonia around 2750 B.C. They lived in what is now Lebanon, in the great seaport city of Tyre. Their barges, rowed by slaves, carried objects of gold, silver, and bronze, colored glass and alabaster bottles filled with perfume, purple fab rics, and timbers from the Cedars of Lebanon. They settled the colony of Gadir in Spain in 1100 B.C. This colony is today the modern city of Cadiz. In Spain they helped to find tremendous deposits of gold, silver, copper, and iron. They also settled t he northwest African colony of Carthage, that became the great enemy of Rome. The Phoenicians traded and distributed tools and weapons made of the new metal, iron, and so helped to end the Bronze Age.
The Phoenicians' greatest contribution to western
civilization arose from the manufacture and trade in papyrus
paper in their seaport of Byblos. They developed an alphabet
based on the so unds of consonants. The Greek word for book,
biblion, is based on the name of the Phonecian paper
manufacturing center, Byblos.
Hired by King Solomon of Israel, Phoencian craftsment built the great Temple in Jerusalem. Solomon obtained copper in the desert to the south, near the town of Eilat. Copper mines in this area were reopened by the modern state of Israel.
Geology
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