What is the Chalcolithic Age?

1 Answer
Jul 25, 2017

A proposed period of time 3,500 BC to 1,700 BC between the exclusive use of stone tools and the extensive use of bronze tools.

Explanation:

The Chalcolithic Age has also been know as the Copper Age, the Eneolithic Age, the Aeneolithic age. It is proposed that tools were made of copper during this period before the discovery bronze.

There is evidence of early copper smelting and of tools made mainly of copper. Adding Tin the smelting of copper makes an alloy much stronger than pure copper. Most British prehistorians do not recognize the Copper Age as being a separate period of time between the stone ages and the Bronze ages.

It is likely that because of impurities in the copper ore that even the earliest copper tools contain some tin making them bronze tools. The realization of the need to add tin may have been a discovering made in more than one place and time, making the transition from the use of native copper mixed with tin to the deliberate use of tin to form a more useful alloy difficult.

The Chalcolithic Age is a denotation of the period of transitions from the use of native cooper to the deliberate use of bronze a tin copper alloy.