From the very beginning, people in Mesopotamia were acquainted not only with the use of polished stone utensils but also with the use of copper for knives and for beads and other ornaments. This, the earliest phase of metallurgy, had originated in the 7th millennium in the use of the potter’s oven for the production of ceramic pottery in northern Iraq, Iran, and Anatolia and would in the 5th and 4th millennia spread all over the Near East and large parts of Europe. It is possible, however, that in the Balkans copper metallurgy arose independently, as it would later in East and Southeast Asia. As a relatively soft metal, copper remained of limited use until in the later 4th millennium it was discovered that by applying an admixture of tin, a harder, albeit sometimes brittle metal was acquired that could well be used for various tools and weapons. It is unknown where the first ever bronze was produced, but the oldest bronze objects known in western Asia stem from southern Mesopotamia. Here, the Bronze Age began around 3000 BC. It is a period in prehistory and ancient history that, like the Neolithic, began in different regions at different times.
Roughly at the same time or just a little earlier, in the later part of the 4th millennium BC, another invention made its appearance here as a result of a—for us—rather obscure development: the use of script. These two great inventions, as well as others, were in a sense the result of the big step that had been the genesis of the first urban civilization. For it was the cities that provided the required concentration of population that in its turn made possible an ongoing specialization of labor, creating the space and leisure for innovations and inventions. After the great Neolithic change, it was this urbanization that led to the rise of more complex civilizations.
World History
