Early Chemistry in Ancient Civilizations

Before human history was written down, there was no activity that we would have called chemistry. The earUest humans used natural materials just as they foimd them. They wore the skins of the animals they killed. They were hunters and gatherers who ate their food raw. Their tools were stones or the crude shaping of stones into simple, useful implements. They witnessed Ughtning strikes that resulted in wild fires, but they could not control fire. 

Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, not to be confused with brass, which is an alloy of copper and zinc. 

Then early men and women learned to harness fire, and their world was never the same. Fire meant cooking, warmth, and metallurgy. 

Roll the clock forward many millennia from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, to the early civilizations of the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Egyptians. The first metal to be used as a structural material was copper, which was used in the making of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. Bronze is very hard and easily cast and was used to make weapons, utensils, and other household items. 

By the 2000s BCE, these early civilizations had begun to distinguish the differences among pure substances that today we would call elements. The elements known to ancient peoples were carbon, iron, copper, silver, gold, mercury, sulfur, tin, lead, and antimony. 

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