The
Bronze Age is a
period characterized by the use of
copper and its
alloy bronze and
proto-writing, and other features of urban
civilization.
The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the
three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, for classifying and studying ancient societies. An ancient civilization can be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with
tin, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in
western Asia before the
third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the
Neolithic period, but in some parts of the world, the
Copper Age served as a transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Although the
Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic from outside the region except for
Sub-Saharan Africa where it was developed independently.
Bronze Age cultures differed in their
development of the first writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in
Egypt (
hieroglyphs), the
Near East (
cuneiform),
China (
oracle bone script)—and the
Mediterranean, with the Mycenaean culture (
Linear B)—had viable writing systems.