Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c10.24

c10.24

But there is another process involved if full use is to be made of copper, and that is melting it when in metallic form so that it can be cast. Now this requires a much higher temperature, 1,085° C., and one which could be reached only in a more advanced type of kiln than would produce the heat necessary for smelting from the ore. So for a long time copper must have been worked by hammering and cutting only, whether from the natural metal or from metal smelted from ore, and the further development of furnace types seems to have taken place in Mesopotamia. Certain metallurgists think that smelting may have been invented as a technique only after native copper supplies were worked out, but the evidence for this rather contradictory sequence is not conclusive.