Key Facts about Copper Age

About Copper Age

• The Copper Age, or Chalcolithic time period, is a period that spans from about 5,000 to 2,000 years ago, depending on the region.
• It was a transitional phase from the Neolithic period (the New Stone Age) to the Bronze Age.
• Features:
  • It is characterized by the emergence of metallurgy, especially the use of copper, along with stone tools.
  • It coincides with the beginnings of craft specialization, the development of agriculture, long-distance trade, and increased sociopolitical complexity.
  • Farmers typically raised domestic animals such as sheep-goats, cattle, and pigs, a diet supplemented by hunting and fishing.
• Crops grown by Chalcolithic farmers included barley, wheat, and pulses.
  • A main identifying characteristic of the Chalcolithic period is polychrome painted pottery.
  • Houses built by Chalcolithic farmers were constructed of stone or mudbrick.
• One characteristic pattern is a chain building, a row of rectangular houses connected to one another by shared party walls on the short ends. 
• Another pattern, seen in larger settlements, is a set of rooms around a central courtyard, which may have facilitated the same sort of social arrangement. 
  • In archaeology, the first signs of massacres, battles, and warrior burials begin appearing with the rise of the Copper Age.
• By the end of the Copper Age, people discovered that by adding tin to copper, a stronger and more durable metal could be created: bronze. From that point on, the Bronze Age begins.

Q1) What is the Neolithic period?

The Neolithic Period, also called the New Stone Age, is the final stage of cultural evolution or technological development among prehistoric humans. The term Neolithic is most frequently used in connection with agriculture, which is the time when cereal cultivation and animal domestication were introduced. It is characterized by the beginning of a settled human lifestyle. The Neolithic stage of development was attained during the Holocene Epoch (the last 11,700 years of Earth’s history). The starting point of the Neolithic is generally thought to have occurred sometime around 10,000 BCE. The Neolithic followed the Paleolithic Period, or the age of chipped-stone tools, and preceded the Bronze Age, or the early period of metal tools.

Source: A 5,000-year-old cemetery discovered in Italy belongs to the Copper Age