No substance has been as important to the development of civilization than metal. And of those metals, Copper was the first to be utilized, and then the first to be used to smelt, or create new, harder metals through heat and hammering.
But lets go back. Waaaaay back to the beginning...
The Copper Age: from 7000 BC
Back in the neolithic period, when folks were still running around with rocks and sticks, a few creative guys found some copper on the ground and began hammering it into crude knives and sickles. While these tools would have worn down quickly, they sure worked faster and easier than flint! With this reliable metal, they were able to farm, creating settlements and allowing the the creation of culture and what we think of today as civilization.It wasn't until some accidental, yet miraculous happenstance that revealed a secret. Somehow a lump of raw copper, or perhaps another tool fell into the fire. When it cooled, it would have been found to have solidified into a new shape… and casting was born!!!
But wait… There’s more!! {Think game show host voice}
Somehow it was discovered that when certain stones get super hot, azurite (blue) and malachite (green) to be specific, a liquid metal will pour out of them. Turns out these stones are two of the ores that copper comes in/out of!! Ta Dah! Smelting was discovered!!!
Can you imagine how wild that must have been for our ancient, ancient forefathers?! Today we would look at them as innovators., The guys who invented the internet, lets say. Back then, they must have been looked at as magicians!!
You figure after awhile, they would probably end up running out of copper, both raw and ore, just a’hanging out on the surface of the earth. So they started digging. And they would dig deep! Another innovation…Mining! By 4000 BC, deep shafts had been cut into hillsides in the Balkans.
The next big change in technology wouldn't happen until over 1000 years later, and again, it involves copper!
The Bronze Age: from 2800 BC
Some creative geniuses (no, not the same ones who first hammered the copper. That was over 4200 years before. They would have been way, longtime dead) But back to the those bronze age geniuses…
When Copper and Tin are cast as one substance, you have bronze. OK, so those guys probably weren't geniuses, seeing as copper and tin are found together in naturally occurring ore. And, since bronze is harder than either one of those two metals on their own, the tools could take on a sharper blade edge, and didn't wear down or dull as quickly. All of these advances, based on copper, allowed for even more leisure time, therefore allowing more art and culture to develop.
It wasn't until 1500 BC, a mere 3500 years ago, that we finally moved away from copper as our main source of metal, and into the Iron Age. But that certainly isn't to say that copper lost it’s usefulness; it was still in heavy demand for bronze and copper artifacts.
Would you have ever guessed it?!
This rich history and the groundbreaking technologies that copper made possible is a big part of what drew me to using copper as my medium… my muse. Not only is it an affordable alternative to the precious metals of gold and silver, it is also an unconventional metal in modern times, and for those of you who know me, I just love to do things a little differently.
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