How did Bronze Working begin?

I was up late last night because I have no life, and I started thinking about odd things. I started to wonder how bronze working began. It seems like you couldn't smelt any metal with rock, so I can't see how the first metal implements could have been made. Since Wiki doesn't know, I figured I would bring the question to you gentlemen.
 
well metal working probably began by accident. a REALLY hot fire for a long time, and someone noticed a rock had melted:eek: so they tried again with a really hot fire (same kind of rock) and noticed the same result. from there it was probably trial and error. pottery would have become their tools because it doesn't melt
 
Could molten bronze really be worked with pottery?

It's how they still do it. Pottery vesesls are used to melt and pour the metal, and pottery moulds for casting. Sandstone and some other minerals also work. Of course, it's all a *bit* more high-tech today than it used to be in the days of Ramesses II, but the principle still applies.

Incidentally, if you ever find out how bronze working really got started, tell my old archeology profs. They didn't know, and I don't think they have found out in the meantime. but the speculation is truly fascinating (and sadly, many of the most interesting sites lie in the most interesting parts of the world).
 
I was up late last night because I have no life, and I started thinking about odd things. I started to wonder how bronze working began. It seems like you couldn't smelt any metal with rock, so I can't see how the first metal implements could have been made. Since Wiki doesn't know, I figured I would bring the question to you gentlemen.

IIRC the usual "just so" story is that people discovered copper first, as a decorative item then as a tool-making material, then later on discovered that arsenic makes it much stronger.
 
It's how they still do it. Pottery vesesls are used to melt and pour the metal, and pottery moulds for casting. Sandstone and some other minerals also work. Of course, it's all a *bit* more high-tech today than it used to be in the days of Ramesses II, but the principle still applies.

Incidentally, if you ever find out how bronze working really got started, tell my old archeology profs. They didn't know, and I don't think they have found out in the meantime. but the speculation is truly fascinating (and sadly, many of the most interesting sites lie in the most interesting parts of the world).


as far as i know bronze was discovered way later than the metals it is an alloy, copper and tin where in use centuries before bronze...

and the whole metallurgy buisiness began in pottery furnaces when someone happened to notice that some stuff in the earths used to make vases did not cook the way was expected,melting instead and separating itself from the rest of the clay at certain, prevedible points (temperature) of the process
 
Two other possibilities...

IIRC, one possibility was that people were mucking around with different coloured rocks to make pigments for cave-art etc.

Another route may have been 'boiling stones': You heat them in fire's 'coals', fetch them out with improvised green-wood tongs aka half-split stick and plosh them into a skinful of cold water. When they're done fizzing, fish them out, put them back in fire. Repeat until done. With the right sort of rock, boiling stones can last a surprising time. Perhaps some-one got lucky with the 'wrong type of rock', minerals were 'reduced' to metal in the fire and quenching flaked off the crud to reveal shiny beads. Ooh, pretty !!
 
Perhaps an accident involving an effort to smelt copper and another involving arsenic, either alone or one of several ingredients, too close to one another?

Since the ratio bronze made with arsenic was only 2-3% arsenic to copper this seems possible.

The temperature to melt bronze is 1650 degrees Fahrenheit, by the by, while it takes 1961 degrees Fahrenheit to melt copper.


Minor note: Lacking domestic tin Egypt spent quite some time depending on arsenic for the making of bronze. It may also explain why most scientists now agree that Egypt was rather far behind most of the world in metallurgy, including the recent academic squabble when someone had the bad taste to note that for nearly a millenium after bronze was in use in Mesopotamia and elsewhere not one bronze artifact was discovered in Egypt.
 
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