What was life like in the Copper Age?
The Copper Age was humanity’s first real metal age. It provided a material that could completely replace the weaker stone tools that had been used for many thousands of years. Flint had always been the go-to material for making just about anything, and during the Stone Age, metals with much lower melting temperatures would have been discovered. The problem is that the only ones they would have found and melted before copper would have been lead and tin, both of which are very weak and useless for making any kind of tools or weapons.
When did the copper age start?
In Britain, the copper age started around 3,500 BCE, which is the oldest time that copper tools have been recovered and dated to in the country. It lasted for about 500 years before the invention of bronze, which quickly took over as the metal of choice, and the copper age was fazed out. Around the world, each country had its own timeline for when they discovered how to melt copper. The earliest use came from Mesopotamia, where artifacts made almost purely from copper have been found, dating back to 9000 BCE.
How did the copper age start?
No one knows who the first person from each country was as they discovered how to melt copper before they each had written languages. It’s also likely that multiple people discovered it around the same time as metalworking spread across each country. The initial discovery was probably made by accident, coming from people lining fire pits with rocks that contained copper ore.
Copper has a melting point of 1,085 °C, which is just about hot enough to melt in a normal fire. The fire would have to be quite large and it would help if there was coal added, but placing copper ore on a large flat rock in the center of the fire would indeed melt it. The copper that ran out could then be bashed into shape using copper hammers, or even large stones and a tree trunk as an anvil.
Life in the Copper Age, how did people live?
Copper Age Homes
The copper age saw the cross-over from the stone age to the first metal age, which meant homes were still very simple. At the start of the Copper Age, people were still living in simple stick and animal skin homes, or poorly-covered roofs on top of short walls held together with clay. Copper allowed them to create effective blades and harvesting equipment, which gave birth to the invention of straw thatching. Any type of long straw-like material could be used, such as reeds or certain types of grass, most of which grew in huge amounts across the country.
(The classic Celtic roundhouse design first began to appear during this age)
Copper allowed for huge amounts of thatching material to be easily gathered and this new age saw the first round houses. More commonly recognized as a Celtic roundhouse, these new homes were better in every way. They allowed for a central fire pit which provided maximum warmth, and the smoke could escape through the thatching material, removing the need for any kind of chimney or opening.
Sharing homes with animals
One of the things that became common towards the end of the Iron Age and into the medieval period was to share homes with animals. This was especially common during the medieval era when homes were of a longer cabin design, and often had one half of the home sectioned off to keep a few cows or pigs. This only became popular towards the end of the Iron Age, and even though it would have happened during the Copper Age, this was a very uncommon practice.
Money and goods
The first mass-circulated coins within the British Isles were Roman. The Romans invaded in 43 AD, officially marking the end of the Iron Age, as they brought with them the knowledge of how to make steel. Before their arrival, there wasn’t a single type of coin that would be accepted as national currency, and everything reverted back to the basic trading of goods. This was especially true during the much earlier and more primitive Copper age when people didn’t have a use for metals like gold and silver.
The most commonly traded goods during this age were food and copper. There are remains of ancient Copper mines across the British Isles, where early man would have hacked away at the rock with nothing more than a copper hammer and chisel. Food, animal skins, tools, and weapons were much more valuable than a useless metal that was too soft and heavy to be useful for anything, and so the trading of gold and silver didn’t become popular until towards the middle of the Bronze Age.
What did people eat during the Copper Age?
Copper was much better than flint and you could form it into whatever shape you wanted. The problem was that copper wasn’t very strong and easily chips and dents, making it a poor choice for anything long, like a sword or scythe. The mass production of grain didn’t start until the Iron Age when people had a material strong enough to make a plow from. The Copper Age also had a very small population, estimated to be only a few hundred thousand spread across the entire British Isles. This meant that wild food would have been abundant, and competition for it at an all-time low.
Huge herds of wild deer, cows, goats, and small game would have been hunted, and with such low competition between people for wild game, it wouldn’t have been hard to find something to eat, so long as you could catch it.
Grain was only planted on a small scale, along with a handful of other crops like beans and cabbage. Foraging would have been a major food source and preservable foods like nuts would have been available in huge quantities. Living close to the sea was the location of choice for most, and coastal settlements benefitted from increased trade and food from the sea.
One interesting thing about the Copper Age diet is what they didn’t have. The following plants and animals are a fraction of the goods that were introduced to the British Isles by either the Romans or during the age of exploration starting in the 1600s:
Grapes, pears, apples, plums, cherries, almonds, walnuts, coriander, oranges, lemons, limes, olives, cauliflower, potatoes, rabbits, turkeys, cucumber, celery, dates, sugar, chocolate, citrus fruit, rice, corn, and a whole range of other things that we can just go to the shop and buy.
Daily life in the Copper Age
Everything would have been a struggle in this age. Whatever job you do, it would be done from dawn until dusk and would often not provide anything useful. Hunts would often come back empty-handed and nothing could be done about crop diseases other than to pray to whoever their gods were at the time.
Conflicts within this era were not common, as people didn’t have to compete for land or resources, instead, each settlement made up its own laws. There was no national power to come to someone’s defense and if one town wanted to attack another, there was nothing to stop them other than a small defensive wall.
Clothing would be primarily wool and leather, as both would be a product of hunting and the ability to mass produce flax for linen was still a long way off. Cotton and silk were several thousand years away from arriving and the only other alternative would have been reeds. Thick-cloth products like sacks and outer blankets were often made from finely woven reed, but this only seemed to be the case when leather and wool weren’t available.
