-
There's a barely conceivable disconnect between learning how to chip away at a suitable pebble, (a flint), to make a variety of of useful tools, to 'burning' another pebble/bunch of rocks to liberate the metal within, and then when you get annoyed at how soft Copper is, to find another metal, (Tin), to make Bronze.
The Stone Age persisted for roughly 3.4 million years, but it took barely a couple of thousand years to 'find' Iron.
Flints were sufficiently available that an alternative was not considered for most of human history.
mespilus-
The Stone Age persisted for roughly 3.4 million years, but it took barely a couple of thousand years to 'find' Iron.
Good point, but as a counterpoint: metallurgy ‘developed’ on seemingly isolated parts of the globe (at around the same time). It’s an entirely plausible coincidence, but a hefty one, that Native American tribes created the first copper tools ever at around the same time that Middle Eastern tribes did, and no one had ever done something similar before.
Leshaches
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
Agreed, but our understanding of the chronology of human achievement is limited by what has survived through the ages. Prehistoric does not mean rudimentary: Göbelki Tepi predates Stonehenge by 5000 years. More time passed between the time that site was active and flourishing and the construction of Stonehenge than between Stonehenge and now, and we have no idea who built (the much more complex) gobelki tepi or how or why.