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Metal production in the ancient Middle East. The metals of antiquity are the seven metals which humans had identified and found use for in prehistoric times in Africa, Europe and throughout Asia: [1] gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron, and mercury.
While technology did advance to the point of creating surprisingly pure copper, most ancient metals are in fact alloys, the most important being bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. As metallurgical technology developed ( hammering , melting , smelting , roasting , cupellation , moulding , smithing , etc.), more metals were intentionally ...
This created the demand for rare tin metal and formed a trade network that linked the distant sources of tin to the markets of Bronze Age cultures. Cassiterite (SnO 2), oxidized tin, most likely was the original source of tin in ancient times.
Reconstruction of Ötzi's copper axe (c. 3300 BCE). The Copper Age, also called the Eneolithic or the Chalcolithic Age, has been traditionally understood as a transitional period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, in which a gradual introduction of the metal (native copper) took place, while stone was still the main resource utilized.
Orichalcum or aurichalcum / ˌ ɔːr ɪ ˈ k æ l k ə m / is a metal mentioned in several ancient writings, including the story of Atlantis in the Critias of Plato.Within the dialogue, Critias (460–403 BC) says that orichalcum had been considered second only to gold in value and had been found and mined in many parts of Atlantis in ancient times, but that by Critias's own time, orichalcum ...
Indigenous Americans had been using native metals from ancient times, with recent finds of gold artifacts in the Andean region dated to 2155–1936 BC, [1] and North American copper finds being dated to approximately 5000 BC. [2]
Gold, silver and bronze or copper were the principal coinage metals of the ancient world, the medieval period and into the late modern period when the diversity of coinage metals increased. Coins are often made from more than one metal, either using alloys, coatings (cladding/plating) or bimetallic configurations. While coins are primarily made ...
Ancient Roman miners used double-sided hammers, broad sided pickaxes, [11] and picks that were usually made of iron. [12] [13] [14] Child laborers in ancient mines possibly carried baskets that were used to transport materials. [13] Another tool used by miners was the dolabra fossoria, which was capable of being used as a pickaxe or as a mattock.