ORE THE BEGINNING OF =} ISATION AS WE KNOW IT 7LAMAMAAAAAMAMAAAAALAAALASA, 4AAAMAAhAAhAAaAaaaaaaaaaaaad, AAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAA4AAaaad, AAAAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA A, AAAAMAAAMAAAAAAAAAAahaaaad, LAAAAMAAMAAAAAAAAAALAAAAA A, AAAAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAd, AAMAAAAAAAAAAhAAAahahsaaad. 4AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS, L4AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS A, LAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA A, AAAAAAAAAAMAAAAAAAAAAAL SA, LAMAAMAAAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAad, LAAAAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA SA. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhad, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaad, AAAMAAAAAAAAAAMAAAAAAAAA A,WELCOME TO be Bronze Age soften seen as an age cof mystery and magi but its also the age in which civilisation 25 we know it began. The cscovery of bronze created something much more complex than an alloy of copper and tin: it coated the technologies and trade networks needed o acquire and process those aw materials. tamed horses, built sailing ships and wheeled vehicles o transport goods, brought people together in arger communities, and built walls and social structures around thems: Ireate systems of writing so tat they could Ieep tallies of trade and rie letters to each other cross bigger distances than many people had ever tnavelled before. The story ofthe Bronze Age isthe story of how our werd began. and you can discover everything we Imow about it inside these pages.BRONZE AGE History@ Contents 08 The Age of Bronze TECHNOLOGY 18 Before the Bronze Age 22 The Trundholm Sun Chariot 24 The mysterious Houmuwu Ding 26 How bronze began 32 The Berlin Gold Hat 34 The Bush Barrow Burial 36 Trade in the Bronze Age 42 The cuneiform tablets of Kiiltepe 44 The horned Vikse helmetsAncient weapons and warfare Welsh gold: The Burton Hoard ‘The Mask of Agamemnon. Grave of the Griffin Warrior 0 The Nebra Sky Disk Toys of the Indus Valley The cities of ancient Sumer ‘The Indo-Europeans in the Bronze Age The Indus Valley civilisation The kingdoms of ancient Egypt ‘The Bronze Age Aegean Contents Pioneers of the Levant and Anatolia Secrets of the Soviet sands The Akkadian Empire Britain and the Atlantic Bronze Age The Bronze Age and the Far East The Nordic Bronze Age Bronze Age Europe Bronze Age CollapseThe Age of Bronze THE AGE OF BRONZE The invention of bronze marked the moment humanity learned to create the tools and technology to change the world onze Age is aloaded term. Many are happy to use it as an insult to call something hackieards Yet the more we dy tthe more rematkable the Bronze [Age eems 25 a moment of transition and ‘of startling innovation. Bronze is deinely nota losers metal ‘There sno global consensus as o when the Bronze Age occurted, Bronze. an alloy of copper with asenic or tin, was fst produced in rg ‘quantities around 3300 BCE in Mesopotamia In Briain, onthe other hand, bronze only hecame a ‘common material arin 2100 BCE. When tlng aout the Bronze Age we must be aware that it happened incifeent place and at different times. ‘Also, noone at Ue ime wealised thay weve living in the age of bronze it isa term we have applied looking back on them. ‘onze was not the fist metal tobe used, It Iarpey replaced the use of copper in tools and TIMELINE DEFINING MOMENT Written by Ben Gazur ‘weapons. Coppers shiny and beautiful but also relatively sot and easily damaged. By mixing ‘copper with other elements in reese proportions You can form bronze, which is far more durable ‘The sill of making bronze marks the passage of humanity frm the Stone Age and int a period of uch grater social complex. ‘To examine the Bronze Age sto watch humanity evolve from small sae coramunities ‘the first tre cies, The rarity of tin and its ‘importance in crafting bronze would see networks ‘of rade form that crossed continent anc ed to the ist wave of globalisation. Alongside the developments in metallurgy would come cther technological advances that alowed the eration ‘of eamplex evlsation -a8 wl a organised ‘warfare fo te fst ume. By the te on was fst forged ito tools, the bronze Age Nad lasted for several millenia fron vhas many advantages over bronze but i id not fundamentally change how humanity behaved, Bronze had already shaped the course of our future and cst us in our eurent form 2s surely as bronze worker thousands of years ago pouring the molten metal into a mould. heesting MET a eonze one feundin Germany Lie ones woul poted noi DEFINING MOMENT Bronze 5th millennium BCE Tedd alg wih see allege mame Cope ten exes when eres aos Str coma va unde cae ce Ee writing 3200 BCE ig Seen emt tegen ‘peas ol eng agape Poteet upd een Felon btn Sumer dee pctogrms developed to hewn Tange Loo car Tse wedge shaped mings lb as nae net aya baled wo pode be ‘ete sup ising mruments wring allowed compe Sweeps ats asc coe a dats Svarwedto ft ete hig sa tee hs agar. {hls Aenea aloes ore Seo going ships othe whee! 1 Domestication ofthe horse fe matnematcs fengtrsed nto Neate fomimager ie Wado Est eld wane rele ‘eit nthe fain ol copie sects. 3 Were exams Gestedcompex ae ets ‘inspection re Sohne ener ch tiuifaycowosed tome. stated tates rd Steps nthe de fase tovlensacecty rand don roee ate ‘Se et spend ot ‘ould ayes fslre Conares cht feoy ars sronty ELSThe Age of Bronze DEFINING MOMENT Iron 1500 BCE0 The Age of Bronze INVENTING THE BRONZE AGE The Bronze Age had to be invented twice: first by ancient metallurgists and then by the archaeologists who rediscovered it ees veered Eerieiteentnrsent) ‘echaeologists wil tell you that in ‘thet work “Context ling” Where an artefact is found and the items found alongside tate often just 35 portant asthe pnsical object ital. ‘The relationships between finds can tell us a gre deal about the past. One ofthe fist te think about axchacology inthis way was Christian Jirgensen ‘Thomsen - father ofthe Bronze Age. CURATING THE PAST People have alvays been fascinaed bythe past. The Raman statesman Cicero went looking for the lost and forgotten tomb of the mathematician Archimedes in 75 BCE while in the 2nd century ( Pausanias wrote ten books describing Greece and the ancent ses that could be found thee His work was used asa guide for hundreds of years for those seeking out the past Aient objects were often venerated simply in France nce a large Roman carved cam showing the Julio Caudian imperial family, Re church guardians constructed elaborate Christian readings ofthe image without knowing exactly what was. ‘Antiquanans ofthe Enlightenment collected all ‘manne of artefacts to place in thelr cabinets of ‘curiosity, Stone axes might sit alongside ancient Pottery, stuffed animals, and fossis. Lite effort was made to systematise these heterogeneous collections of stufl.C3 Thomsen was among the fist to uy and disentangle the knots of history from archaeologal finds THE THREE AGES ‘Thomsen was tasked with organising the artefacts ‘owned by the Danish Royal Commission fo the Preservation of Antiquities later puting them ‘on display in what would become the national ‘museum. Iwas common 3t the time for museums to simply place tems together depending onthe ‘material they were mode from and bow beautiful they were. Thomsen decide to do something ferent with his antiquities, Without ever ging out into the fed to dig for finds, Thorasen examined which artefacts inthe museum hed been found together His work showed that alongside stone tools you were likely to find porter, amber, and bone, When bronve weapons and tools were found then iron was absent, seemed to Thomsen that there were ‘lear periods that could be defined from the material they used for object that cut His essay Brief Outlook on Monuments and Antiquities from ‘the Nordic Past explained that frm his wor be could discern three distinct periods of Nordic Dehistory. "The Age of Stone, er that period when weapons and implements were mace of stone, wood, bene, or some such materia, and dling ich very lite or noting at ll vas ‘known of meta. The Age of Bronze, in which ‘weapons and cutting implements were made of copper or bronze, and nothing at al ot bt very Title was known of ron or siver., The Age of Tron is the third and lst period of the heathen times, in which ron was used for chose aries to whit that metal is eminent suited, ain the fabrication of which it eame to be employed as asubsteute fer bronze” This categorisation of Prehistory into Stone, ronze, and ion has been found to hold te for haman ty eles days in many places Others had proposed such three age system before butt was Thomsen who gave i widespread appeal by physically showing i wth ‘evidence, On his coat of arms Thomsen incaed the motto “The objects frst, then the writings. BRONZE AGE TECHNOLOGY “The bronze Age, then is 2 period defined by the technology at people used. There i therefore THE AGE (0) el PNY Sra eet ote een et a) er erat teaeia ‘no Single definition of when the Bronze Age ‘occured, fit occurred at all northern Europe, where Thomsen took his evidence from, the age when bronze was the dominant material lasted fom around 1700-500 BCE. In Mesopetami, however, the Bronze Age is considered to have ‘begun around 3500 BCE and ended around 1100 BCE. Tiss because the technology required to create bronze, an late fo-smelt the ron that ‘would replace it, was only slowly adopted in some locations o was impossible due toa lack of the necessary raw materials. [Not every culture followed the Stone, Bronze, ‘ion Age path of development. tn the Amexcas bronze was certainly created by the Mocte ‘people around 200 BCE, bu i erained limited te decorative and high stats items. Because of the radically different conditions inthe Americas, ‘bronze was inherently of less use othe peoples ‘who lived there than twas to thse in Eurasia. It is possible that the Spanish conquests cut ofthe ‘chance of true American Bronze Age emersing ‘bu it seem likely ther technology would have evolved in different ways. in Australia and Neve Zealand tone was the ultimate cuting tol and remained in use in indigenous cultures unt the 2th century. ‘When we use the tem Bronze Age, then. we are Aeseribing a wide geographical area and millennia ‘of time. What unites the people vio lived inthis age was the ability to smeit metals fom ores Create analloy of copper ani tin, and cast this {nto useful objects. Yet bronze was not the only nateril they had that they could use. Sometimes The Age of Bronze iagecec ' stone or organic materials yee ust as important even i bronze was shinier. ‘Much of the technology available to Bronze Age people did not come directly from the {vallanlty of bronze. terigation was more vital co the emergence of the fst cities n Mesopotamia, {Egypt and the Indus Valley than any meta. The whee made of weod, transformed agnicultre nd led to innovation in warfare a chariots came ‘wo dominate battlefields. Writing could be sed to record and share al sors of formation. AS we shal see, the Bronze Age was one ofthe mest snmovative ets im human history and bronze was just one ofits great discoveries,The Age of Bronze IMAGINING THE BRONZE AGE Was the Bronze Age a step up for humanity or just another fall further from perfection? Writers of antiquity had very different views R {isnot only modern archaeologists who look backon the ronze Age with wonder The ancient Greeks who saw the rowering walls ang heavy blocks of Mycenaean monuments ‘onl not believe they were built by men at AIL For them these were the remains of sructures erected by the Cyclopes of legend, To reconstruct, their past tey relied on mythology to make sense ofthe fragmentary remains and artefacts they found, Stil sometimes they came remarkably ‘lose tothe truth, THE DESCENT OF MAN (ne of the eatlest extant works of Greek erature is Heslod's Works and Days. This pocm, probably ‘wrtten around 700 BCE, gives vivid view into what if was like in early Greece. Addresses t0 Hesiod layabout brother, the poem describes ‘many aspects of farming, Perseus skips vere and listens te debates in the matletplace so Hesiod chhdes him, at some length, that he should be hard at work on the farm. The gods have not made Ife 1s) for mortals and Hesiod tell the story of hort humanity came to have such hatd ives. ive ages of humanity are Iisted by Hestod, The frst race tobe created wee the Goken people wo lived lke gos. "Like he gods they ved wit happy hears untouched by work or sorrow” and "vile old age appeared not” When death came.on these people twas a soft as sleep and they lived ‘na spits of good fortune The next race the gods created were the Stver tones. These spent a childhood ofa undred years. at home before maturing As adults thet lives were nasty, brutish, and shore because they ‘quartelled with one another Worse, from the point Df view of Zeus, was the fact they didnot sacniice to the gods, Zeus red them ander che ground, [Next came the Bronze race who "sprung from the ash tree” These people were lesser in every \way to the Siver bu were “strange a full ower” Thy lived for warfare and didnot bother with agriculture. We ae told “Their weapons ote bronze, their houses broaz,thet tls were ‘onze. black fon ae not known” Given thet bpliccse nature this race died by thet cw hands, leaving only thelr bronze artefacts bebind them, Following the Bronze age was the Heroic ace of demi-gods whose achievements live on in epic tales and song. They were brave and mighty and ae ‘Were the ancient writers recording a partially remembered tale of the invention of bronze, or was it lucky supposition?” id great things. When these herces died they ‘went to live on the ne ofthe Blessed, leaving this ‘wat of eres behing, “Then Hesiod comes to his curtent, lon, age. “L wish I were not of this ace that Thad died before, ‘or had oot yet been born Gane ar te great ok days and now men must work unceasingly by day and waste avay as they sleep at night. The poem then foreses the destruction ofthis Ion Age and its mplacement wit a still worse one. For Hesiod, then, the story of maniknd is one ofan endless fll from grace ON THE NATURE OF THINGS thor classical writers took a quite altferent View fom Hesiea’s pessimistic reading of ‘humanity's fate, While Hesiod ses a metaphorical terminology forthe Gold and Silver Ages be realises that bronze really was used by the people who came before the en) current en Age For the Roman poet Lucrotus this fact was a key historical realisation. ‘Titus Lucretius Carus lived in the st century [BCE and wrote a lng poem explaining the Philosophy of the Hpicureans His On the Narure (OF Things tackled everyting from atomic theory to lve, He accurately described Brownian Motion hhundteds of years befor it was glvn that name and he created a three age history of humanity long before it was fully explored For Lacetns the frst age of mankind occured after they natural sprang up alongside other species. These frst people were living in a sate of ature. "No one spent his strength in guiding the curved plough” They lived on frat and berries as the Bath provided them, Yetit was arough age, as they had no sense of eomumunity or the commonThe Age of Bronze THE PLATONIC SOULS goad. These people fought with stone wespons also saw humanity siccuml to greed, brutal wars, iron, or was t meray hiky suppostior? Fither nd wooden clubs. It was fie thst changed and impiety, way shows our shared drive to know more about things With Fire people began to ive together in Were the ancient writers recording a partially the distant past andthe dive to organise ur villages and build lasting structures. Lucretius remembered tale ofthe invention of bronze and knowledge and understanding of che wor tells us that after fre ripped through a forest the peoples would fin pools of metal that had been Feasted from te rocks, With these came the next developments in humanity (Copper and bronze were discovered fs according to both Lucretius and modern rchaeology, and allowed che ist tris wars. “The ealest weapons were hands nails and teth. [Next came stones and bmanctes wrench from noes, and fr ad lame as soom 38 these Were discovered. Then men learnt fo ge tough ion and copper. Wit copper they tilled the sil. Wit copper they whipped up the clashing waves of ‘war. Then by slow degrees the ira sverd came to the fre the bronze sickle fell inte disrepute the ploughman began to cleave the earth with ton, METAMORPHOSIS (Oviats Meiameyposis gives a move mixed view of human prohistry For Ovid there had been, four ages of mankind. The Golden Age was one ofustice and bounty when “secure a happy multitude enjoyed repose” The flowing Siver ‘Age saw the coming of ferming and the building the ist towns, Next came the Bronze Age wien ruol people were inclined to arms” but ‘hey atlas reverenced the gods. Te final age was ron, whieh brought wit t successes ke navigation, mining and the tise of nations, butThe Age of Bronze DISCOVERING THE BRONZE AGE Understanding the Bronze Age has required piecing together thousands of discoveries, and more are being made all the time 1 I j | nthe 16h contuy It was common for people to find ‘thunderstones left bei afer lighting strikes. These stones were often axe (of ato shaped with Fine cutting edges Those interested in natural philosophy collected them and were in no doubt that these thundetstones wer simply the natural ‘byprodact of storm. Today we knew tem to be tools crafted by ancient people. They reserable arrowheads because they ae arowbeads To ge tur modern understanding ofthe pat required 3 ew way of conceiving the werld, THE BIRTH OF ARCHAEOLOGY Iwas contact with peoples in the New World \who still used stone arrowhesds that allowed Europeans to identify thunderstonesconectly for the first time Broadened horizons of knowiedge began to piece together much ofthe evidence valable at che time. We have already seen how by grouping archaeological finds together C3 ‘Thomsen was able to use empirical evidence to ‘show that there was indeed 3 saquence of Sone, Bronze, and iton Ages in northem Europe. The 19th century save the application of science to history ina way that had never occurred before “Antiquarian digging up artefacts began to place Increasing importance onthe location of thet discovers, While some adventurous, perhaps 4 ‘unscrupulous diggers, lke Heinrich Schliemann, at Troy, often tunelled straight to the most tering artefacts others developed stratigraphy ‘88 way of dating thet finds, By examining the layers above and below an archaeological sitea Jot of information canbe gained about ts age and ‘what was happening there, ‘As Thomsen's theories of 2 Rronze Age ‘preceding an Iron Age spread, archaeologists began to lok for evidence of iin places ouside fof the Nord countries. Wherever they looked in "Eurasia the same pattern of stratification emerged, Deeper, eal, layers contained stone tals, above ‘hem in more rceat deposits came copper and ‘bronze artefacts and iron then replaced bronze as the metal of choie of cutting implemen. ‘Only later with the ability to relatively date objects did it hecome clear that the distibation of bronze and iron technology ocurred in ciferent places at ferent times. But winerever ion became common it inevitably spelled the end of the use of bronze. READING THE PAST ‘The physical remains ofa people can tell us ots about them, but they can only mutey inform our theotes by offering evidence. The best way to find ‘out about a person isto ask them questions, and the Bronze Age is Ue fist in oman histry where ‘we can directly engage with how peopl ofthe past thought ‘This is because the Bronze Age saw the bath of wtng ‘Across the Middle East there were vast umbers of enigmatic writings avaiable to historians. bot no way of reading them. Egypt was covered with hieroglyphic on almost every surface, and {he tiny impressions of cuneiform txts could be found everywhore in Mesopotamia tn 1709) the Rosetta Stone was discovered, which finally allowed Egyptian hierogiyphics to be cracked. Bearing the same inscipeon in Greek, demote Egyptian, and hieroglyphs, by comparing the hneroglypls to the ote sections i became possible to finally read eroglypis, Texts dating back to 3000 BCE could now be read in Egypt, taking us back to the beginning of che Bronze Age ther, [a Mesopotamia, the ‘neiform texts began to be intelligible after Henry Rawlinson climbed the clfs a Behistun to record the ilingual insertion that Darius the Croat had set int the rock face thre. With ther finds Les the Ugartic texts and the records of the Hutte Empire we ave gained many firsthand aeceunts oF what life was ike in the Bronze Age ‘Without these texts we would have no iéea of che complex diplomacy that flourished tn the “Mie Eastern Bronze Age We have a leer from the king of the ities tothe Fayptian pharaoh asking "Why, my beter, have you held back the shipments (or git) that your father was sending tome, when he wae ale Nothing would remain ofthe complex treaties kings signed with each other that deale with matters such as what to {dof atte exssed fom one realm to ante, “More importantly we would lack any insight in the mythology and religion that helped ancient peoples make sense oftheir vid A_GLOBAL SYSTEM OF HISTORY Tho discovery ofthe Bronze Age has nover tly stopped. Every year new findings help to finesse tu knowledge of Bronze Age life. These can be a5 sartling as shipwrecks that completely change fr ideas about trade inthe ancient world, of aslumble as ancient ties that revel what parasites riddled our ancestors Piecing together all the findings is how we are able to seceate the ancient woud. It may take specials to read forgotten languages and trainedThe Age of Bronze archaeologists to uncover artefacts, but only by bringing together al ur knowledge can Ww rounded view ofthis exiting perlod, The Bronze ‘Age was therefore not just an. age of metal bu one in which real people travelled lng distances, came together to create reat monuments, shaped the lands they lived in to make their fields fruitful, and formed great ivleations that stl amaze ws today ‘Wealso know thatas individuals they were as real as any of us today. A Bronze Age burial of 2 young man andl woman aged around 16 yeats ‘old shows how the two were placed lovingly in tHe earth with precious goods inside thelr grave the two had been positioned so that they looked Airectly ino each others eves 1 we are fo understand the Bronze Age we must ted, We know they take imo account everythit learn about, fam the to the belies that fol raves, That is what makes Bronze Age history such 3 fascinating subject.Technology TECHNOLOGY 18 Before the Bronze Age 22 The Trundholm Sun Chariot 24 The mysterious Houmuwu Ding 26 How bronze began. 32 The Berlin Gold Hat 34 The Bush Barrow Burial 36 Trade in the Bronze Age 42 The cuneiform tablets of Kiiltepe 44 The horned Vikso helmets 46 Ancient weapons and warfare 50 Welsh gold: The Burton Hoard 52 The Mask of Agamemnon 54 Grave of the Griffin Warrior 60 The Nebra Sky Disk 62. Toys of the Indus ValleyTechnology A ee lege Fae8 Technology BEFORE THE BRONZE AGE The transitional period at the end of the Neolithic was a mysterious and exciting era on the brink of a technological and cultural revolution he massive technological innovations ‘ofthe Bronze Age didi arise ina acu. 1tcan be tempting to think: ofthe inception of metalworking at a sudden jolt that shook Stone Age Society tos core ut i was infact the next stage Ima process that had begun centuries beforeband. ‘The anropological three-age system is divided Ito trinity of evolving technologies. starting with the flint tools of our eatest modern human ancestors and progessing to the use of bronze and then iron. But the Stone Age iself is something of abroad term, andthe primitive cavern of the popular imagination are nothing ike the (Gometimes surprisingly sophisticated) people who actully lived init For a start, thore wi several ers within the Stone Age, encompassing ‘many centuries. These are the Paleolithic Epypaleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic the period in which mans adopted agricltar, At {his pont. many human communities made the ‘wile froma nomadic hunter-gatherer ies 19 2 sete agrarian one, building small settlements culating crops and herding animals. From such small beginnings. it ean seem ike the Bronze isan inexplicably swift and major leap forward at theres another period, one that stradal the gap between the mysteries of prehistory an ur more solid knowledge of history. Isa petiod of har known as proto history’ ~ an eran ‘which some cvlsstons had waiting and some ic, and those who had recorded some vial hitriel details aout those who hadnt. This liminal, inertial erat the end of the Neolithic immeciately before the Bronze Age began s known variously asthe Chalolithie or Enea the Age of Copper Russian folklore tells of place in the mythical kingdom of Opona a utopian earthly paradise at the edge of the Earth, where the inhabitants were all happy, healthy, wellfed and wellofl. This mystical land was known as elevode which is also the name of an archaeological site on Mount ‘Rodnik (mine) in Sebia, Home to Iyrians, Cts, Romans and Slavs over the centuries, amid the Witten by April Madden legends of ancient castles and cursed queens that litter its beech