Note 4 — Chapter XII · How Copper-culture reached China

Archæologists are not agreed as to where copper was first used for the manufacture of weapons and implements. Some favour Egypt, and others Mesopotamia. In the former country the useful metal was worked in pre-Dynastic times, that is, before 3500 B.C. or 4500 B.C. “Copper ornaments and objects, found in graves earlier than the middle pre-Dynastic period”, wrote the late Mr. Leonard W. King, “are small and of little practical utility as compared with the beautifully flaked flint knives, daggers, and lances.… At a rather later stage in the pre-Dynastic period, copper dagger-blades and adzes were produced in imitation of flint and stone forms, and these mark the transition to the heavy weapons and tools of copper which, in the early Dynastic period, largely ousted flint and stone implements for practical use. The gradual attainment of skill in the working of copper ore on the part of the early Egyptians had a marked effect on the whole status of their culture. Their improved weapons enabled them by conquest to draw their raw materials from a far more extended area.”4