As we might expect from its pioneer role in the emergence
of farming,
the Near East was where the earliest developments in the history of
metalworking took place. There was significant use of copper there by
5000 B.C. By about 3000 B.C. bronze was well established, with the
ensuing Bronze Age lasting until about 1200 B.C. Thereafter ironworking
became widespread, and for many purposes iron replaced bronze.
Like farming, metalworking appeared later in numerous
regions outside
the Near East. Thus in Britain and China, bronze was already being
worked in the second millennium B.C., and iron in the fifth or sixth
century B.C. These dates show bronze working spread faster than
farming, and ironworking spread faster than bronze working. There seems
to be less evidence of independent development than in the case of
farming. Only the emergence of Chinese bronze working is a serious
candidate for independence. The more rapidly an innovation spreads, the
less time or need people have to come up with it for themselves.
The Americas are a different story. In the Andean region
copper was
worked in the first millennium B.C., and bronze from the first
millennium A.D.; eventually metalworking techniques from this region
also spread to western Mesoamerica. But iron metallurgy was unknown.
This is not surprising because farming seems to have developed far
later in the New World than in the Old.
