Bronze Age sword

Bronze Age swords appear from around the 17th century BC, in the Black Sea region and the Aegean, as a further development of the dagger. They are replaced by the Iron Age sword during the early part of the 1st millennium BC.

From an early time the swords reach lengths in excess of 100 cm. The technology to produce blades of such lengths appears to have been developed in the Aegean, using alloys of copper and tin or arsenic, around 1700 BC. Typical Bronze Age swords had lengths of roughly between 60 and 80 cm, while weapons significantly shorter than 60 cm also continued to be made, but are variously categorized as "short swords" or as daggers. Before 1400 BC or so, swords remain mostly limited to the Aegean and southeastern Europe, but they become more widespread in the final centuries of the 2nd millennium, to Central Europe and Britain, to the Near East, Central Asia, Northern India and to China.

Predecessors

Before bronze, stone (flint, obsidian f.e.) was used as the primary material for edged cutting tools and weapons. Stone is however very fragile, and therefore not practical to be used for swords. With the introduction of copper, and subsequently bronze, daggers could be made longer, leading to the sword.

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a time period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, for classifying and studying ancient societies.

An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, but in some parts of the world, the Copper Age served as a transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic from outside the region.

Bronze Age (disambiguation)

Bronze Age is an archaeological era, the second part of the three-age system (Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age) for classifying and studying prehistoric societies.

It may also refer to:

See also