Although archaeologists now order the 'ages' of man into the Stone, Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages, in that order, the first use of a metallic substance was almost certainly iron, around 300,000 years ago, when ochre found favour as decoration. Haematite in particular was popular, possibly because of its colour-red, the colour of blood and life. By Neolithic times (8000-6000 BC), there appear to have been special workshops in places like Catal Huyuk to produce red ochre and green malachite in cakelike lumps, as a storage technique.58 In pre-pottery Jericho three life-size plaster figures thought to portray divinities were covered in ochre. But houses too were painted red at other sites in the Middle East. As pottery developed, ochre continued as the favoured colour, though blue-green took over as the colour considered most beneficial to the dead.59 If the colour, lustre and even the weight of metals made their impact on early humans, it was as raw rocks, or in the beds of rivers and streams that they first encountered them. From this, they would have discovered that some rocks, such as flints and cherts, became easier to work with on heating and that others, like native copper, were easier to hammer into serviceable tools. Gradually, therefore, as time passed, the advantages of metals over stone, wood and bone would have become apparent. However, when we think of metallurgy in antiquity we mainly mean one thing-smelting, the apparently magical transformation by which solid rock can be transformed into a molten metal. One can easily imagine the awesome impact this would have had on early humans. Copper ores are found all over the fertile crescent region but invariably in hilly and mountainous regions. Archaeologists are inclined therefore to think this is where metallurgy began, rather than in river valleys. The area favoured nowadays is a region 'whose inhabitants, in addition to possessing ore and fuel, had adopted some form of settled life and were enjoying a chalcolithic culture'.60 This area, between the Elburz mountains and the Caspian Sea, is the front-runner for the origin of metallurgy, though the Hindu Kush and other areas have their adherents too. 'That the discovery was fortuitously made can hardly be doubted, for it is inconceivable that men, simply by taking thought, would have realised the relationship existing between malachite-a rich-blue, friable stone-and the red, malleable substance, which we call copper.'61 Because such a link was regarded then as magical, the early copper-smiths were believed to have superhuman powers. At one stage it was believed that 'the camp-fire was the original smelting furnace'. No more. Quite simply, the hearths at around 4000 BC were not hot enough. Without a forced draught, 'a camp fire, though giving enough heat to cook the food and to warm the feet...would not produce a temperature much higher than about 600 or 650 . Such copper ores as malachite, the easiest to deal with, are not reduced at temperatures lower than 700 to 800 C, and metallic copper does not melt below 1083 C.' It is not only the temperature that acts against campfires. Not being enclosed, the atmosphere would not have been conducive to 'reducing' (separation).62 On the other hand, well before the discovery of smelting, much higher temperatures would have been obtained in some pottery kilns. Two-chambered kilns, with the fire down below and the pots above, had been evolved by the fifth millennium, temperatures as high as 1200 C being obtained, for example, at Susa (Iran) and Tepe Gawra (near Mosul, in Iraq).63 The atmosphere in these baking chambers would have been of a strongly reducing character and modern experiments have confirmed that a spongy copper could be smelted in this way. The accident may have happened when ancient potters used malachite to colour pottery-'and then got the shock of their lives, when the colour delivered was very different from that anticipated'.64 By placing the invention of two-tiered pottery kilns-towards the end of the fifth millennium-next to the archaeological observation that certain copper objects were discovered at Susa, Al 'Ubaid, Nineveh and Ur, we can conclude that smelting was discovered about 4300 BC. We know that by 4000 BC knowledge of the process had spread to a number of regions in western Asia and that, by 3800 BC, copper smelting was being practised 'comparatively widely' in the ancient world.65 'By the early years of the third millennium BC, the people of Sumer had created the first important civilisation known to us in which metals played a conspicuous role.' (The oldest known stock of metal tools dates from 2900 BC.) From these dates onward copper was the dominant metal in western Asia and north Africa until after 2000 BC.66 Insofar as early metallurgy was concerned, after the discovery of smelting two advances were crucial.
These were the discovery first of bronze and second of iron. There are two mysteries surrounding the advent of the Bronze Age, certainly so far as the Middle East is concerned, where it occurred first. One mystery lies in the fact that tin, the alloy with copper that makes it much harder, as bronze, is relatively rare in nature. How did this particular alloy, therefore, come to be made for the first time? And second, why, despite this, were advances so rapid, with the result that, between about 3000 BC and 2600 BC, all the important advances in metallurgical history, save for the hardening of steel, were introduced?67 In one sense, we should call the early Bronze Age the alloy age. This is because for many years, either side of 2000 BC, and despite what was said above, objects that might be called bronze had a very varied chemical make-up. Alloyed with copper, and ranging from less than 1 per cent to 15 per cent, there could be found tin, lead, iron and arsenic, suggesting that although early man had some idea of what made copper harder, more malleable and gave its tools and weapons a better edge, he wasn't entirely comfortable with the precise details of the process. The exact composition of bronze also varied from area to area-between Cyprus, Sumer and Crete, for example. The all-important change-over from copper to real bronze occurred in the first quarter of the second millennium BC. 'Tin differs from copper-and the precious metals-in that it is never found in nature in a pure state. Instead, it is always in chemical combination. It must therefore have been smelted, though (and this is another mystery) hardly any metallic tin has ever been found in excavations by archaeologists. (In fact, only one piece of pure tin older than 1500 BC has ever been found.)'68 Though the exact origins of bronze are obscure, its attractions over copper were real enough, once its method of production could be stabilised, and its increasing popularity brought about considerable changes in the economy of the ancient world. Whereas copper was found in a fairly large number of localities, this was not the case with bronze for, as was said above, in neither Asia nor Europe is tin ore widely distributed. This limitation meant that the places where tin was mined grew considerably in importance and, since they were situated almost entirely in Europe, that continent had advantages denied to Asia and Africa. The fact that bronze was much more fluid than copper made it far more suitable for casting while its widespread use in weapons and tools simply reflects the fact that, provided tin content could be kept at 9-10 per cent, hammered bronze is usually a good 70 per cent stronger than hammered copper. The edges of bronze tools were at least twice as hard as copper.69 This final fact about bronze was very important. The sheer hardness of bronze meant that the edges of daggers became as important as their points, encouraging the development of swords. Moreover, this development coincided with the domestication of the horse in the steppe countries of Europe, and the wheel in Sumer. Warfare was therefore suddenly transformed-in fact, it changed more rapidly than at any other time until gunpowder was used in anger in China in the tenth century AD.70 The Bronze Age reached its peak around 1400 BC. It was a time when iron was scarce and valuable. Tutankhamun reigned for only a very few years as a pharaoh in Egypt, and died about 1350 BC, but his tomb, famously discovered and excavated by Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter in 1922, contained- besides vast quantities of gold, jewels and fabulous ornaments-a dagger, headrest and bracelet all made of iron.71 There were also some very small models of tools, barely an inch long, also made of iron. In all cases this was smelted iron, not meteoric. The earliest iron instruments date from, roughly, 5000 BC, in northern Iraq, Iran and Egypt. But only one of these was smelted, the others being fashioned from meteoric iron. Another early instrument comes from Ur and dates to the early part of the third millennium BC. However, it seems likely that when iron was produced as early as this it had not been recognised as a new metal, or even as a metal at all.72 Iron needs higher temperatures than copper (1100 -1150 ) in order to be separated from its ore, and it needs a larger furnace, so that the particles of iron can drop away from the smelting zone and accumulate below, collecting into a lump usually called a 'bloom'.73 Such a procedure seems to have first been developed and practised within the territory of the Hittite confederacy. The Hittites established a state in central Turkey and northern Syria, 1450-1200 BC, where for a while they successfully challenged the Assyrians