The Bronze Age: A History from Beginning to End

In the nineteenth century, historians began to classify the periods of human prehistory into three ages: Stone, Bronze, and Iron. Of these three, the period known as the Bronze Age (lasting approximately from 3300 to 1200 BCE) was the most significant, not just because people began to work metal on a large scale for the first time but because of other changes taking place. People started to live in large, permanent sites that became the first cities. Agriculture replaced hunting and gathering as the principal means of producing food. The wheel was invented, writing was developed, and the first studies were made of natural sciences including astronomy. International trade became, for the first time, a factor in the lives of even ordinary people. Kings and hierarchical societies emerged, ruling first over small city-states, then over the earliest nations, and finally over vast empires.

This was a defining period in human history when many things that we now take for granted first emerged. Despite intensive study, there is still a great deal about this time that we don’t know, and new knowledge continues to emerge. This is the complex, evolving, and still mysterious story of the Bronze Age.