The Chalcolithic

After the glaciers receded and agriculture became an established way of life for many people living in places like Jericho in Palestine and Catal Huyuk in Anatolia, metallurgy was born. Archaeological findings in Serbia suggest that copper was mined and hammered to make axe heads and other tools, beginning in the 6th millenium B.C.  This practice may have originated independently in several sites around the Mediterranean. Copper tools became common throughout the Middle East during the next millenium.

Presumably men turned to the use of metals for tool production because metal takes an edge better than stone. Copper was probably first choice because it is so abundant and is among the few metals that occasionally appear in a pure state, that is, not combined with stones and other metals in deposits of ore. Copper can be hammered cold, so it could even be used by people with little to no metallurgical skills if they happened to discover a vein of pure copper.

The appearance of forged copper in the historical record begins a transition form the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, which would begin when men learned to create forges powerful enough to completely melt copper (at about 1084 C or 1984 F) and experiment with mixtures of other metals.