Weapons Used During The Iron Age

When civilisation began, people were using stones, ceramics and metals that are found on the surface of the earth to make weapons and tools. The history of human and the way the used materials gave rise to different periods in human history. The diagram below summarises this pre-history time line.

The diagrams below illustrates some of the tools and weapons that were used during the Iron Age.

The Neolithic age was succeeded in Eurasia by the Bronze Age which begins when bronze becomes a much-used material for tools and weapons. The key prerequisite to the Bronze Age was the development of smelting (the process of extracting metal from ore). Once a sufficient volume of metal has been smelted, it can be hammered or cast (melted and poured into a mould) into a desired shape. The first metal to be smelted was copper. Being a rather soft metal, copper was not a dramatic improvement over stone for the crafting of tools and weapons. It was eventually discovered, however, that by blending copper with tin, one obtains a much harder metal: bronze. (Occasionally, other elements were used instead of tin.) Like agriculture, bronze technology radiated from Southwest Asia in all directions, taking roughly a thousand years to cover the entire east-west span of mainland Eurasia (from Britain to China).

Refer to the pages 471-472 of the textbook (Siyavula) with the focus on the diagram on page 471 and the table 4.1. Write down a summary to organize and integrate the information on the history of mankind and the ages of civilization. Compare the information on the textbook with the diagram