What is Bronze Age?
[[File:Metallurgical diffusion.png|thumb|250px|Diffusion of metallurgy in [[Europe]] and [[Asia Minor]]. The darkest areas are the oldest]] [[File:Europe late bronze age.png|thumb|right|250px|Europe in the late Bronze Age]] [[File:Urnenfelder panoply.png|thumb|right|200px|Some common bronze weapons during the Bronze Age]] The '''Bronze Age''' is the time period when people made [[tool]]s from an [[alloy]] (a mixture of metals) called [[bronze]].<ref>Childe V.G. 1930. ''The bronze age''. New York: Macmillan.</ref> It began in the [[Copper Age]] when smiths learned that their copper became stronger with a little tin added. Bronze is a mixture of mainly [[copper]] and [[tin]]: usually nine parts [[copper]] to one part [[tin]]. Materials like wood and stone were also much used, but bronze was better for cutting and chopping, and was easy to shape. The Bronze Age was not at the same time everywhere, because different groups of people began to use bronze at different times. In Western [[Europe]], the Bronze Age lasted from about 2000&nbsp;BC until 800&nbsp;BC. In the [[Middle East]], it started about a thousand years earlier. For example, bronze was first used in [[Mesopotamia]] around 3300&nbsp;BC.<ref>Pernicka E. ''et al'' 2003. Early Bronze Age metallurgy in the northeast Aegean. In: Wagner G.A., Pernicka E. and Uerpmann H-P. (eds) ''Troia and the Troad: scientific approaches, natural science in archaeology''. Berlin; London : Springer, 143–172. {{ISBN|978-3-540-43711-6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~gel115/115ch4.html |title=Chapter 4: The Bronze Age |access-date=2013-09-20 |archive-date=2013-12-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131207094315/http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~gel115/115CH4.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[Archaeologists]] think that people became more organised in the Bronze Age, because the making of metal tools was difficult and needed certain skills. The people who had these new skills would have been important. The new metal tools were bou