In the Middle Bronze Age an apparently " alphabetic " system known as the Proto-Sinaitic script is thought by some to have been developed in the Sinai peninsula during the 19th century BC, by Canaanite workers in the Egyptian turquoise mines.

Agate is one of the most common materials used in the art of hardstone carving, and has been recovered at a number of ancient sites, indicating its widespread use in the ancient world ; for example, archaeological recovery at the Knossos site on Crete illustrates its role in Bronze Age Minoan culture.

Though there was no Bronze Age city on the site, archaeology has detected human activity that is evident from the earliest Iron Age, circa 1100 BC.

Their non-Greek language is confirmed on the site by inscriptions in the Cypriot syllabary which alone in the Aegean world survived the Bronze Age collapse and continued to be used down to the 4th century BC.

There is little doubt that a Mycenaean megaron stood upon the hill during the late Bronze Age.

Aegean civilization is a general term for the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece around the Aegean Sea.

Crete is associated with the Minoan civilization from the Early Bronze Age.

A map of Cyprus in the later Bronze Age ( such as is given by J. L. Myres and M. O. Richter in Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum ) shows more than 25 settlements in and about the Mesaorea district alone, of which one, that at Enkomi, near the site of Salamis, has yielded the richest Aegean treasure in precious metal found outside Mycenae.

Dating to the Greek Bronze Age ( 13th century BC ), it is one of the oldest arch bridges still in existence and use.

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive.

It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal.

Though bronze is generally harder than wrought iron, with Vickers hardness of 60 – 258 vs. 30 – 80, the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age ; this happened because iron was easier to find and easier to process.

Bronze resists corrosion ( especially seawater corrosion ) and metal fatigue more than steel and is a better conductor of heat and electricity than most steels.

Bronze is nonmagnetic.

Bronze is still commonly used in ship propellers and submerged bearings.

Bronze is used to make bronze wool for woodworking applications where steel wool would discolor oak.

Bronze is the preferred metal for top-quality bells, particularly bell metal, which is about 23 % tin.

Bronze is also used for the windings of steel and nylon strings of various stringed instruments such as the double bass, piano, harpsichord, and the guitar ..

Bell Bronze is used to make the tone rings of many professional model banjos.

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons.

The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, for classifying and studying ancient societies.

The Harappan culture, which dates from 1700 BC to 1300 BC, overlapped the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age ; thus it is difficult to date this transition accurately.

The Bronze Star Medal or Bronze Star is an individual military decoration of the United States Armed Forces that may be awarded for acts of heroism, acts of merit, or meritorious service in a combat zone.

Historically the region has been occupied and settled by many cultures dating back to the Bronze Age, including the ancient Phoenicians and Romans, and has also been considerably influenced by the Moorish settlement of the southern Iberian peninsula.

During the twentieth century many more Bronze Age burials were uncovered and opinions about the nature of the early-mid Bronze Age shifted considerably.

The precise beginnings of the Bronze and Copper Ages remain less well-defined.

Bronze has several characteristics that made it preferable as a construction material: although it is relatively expensive, does not always alloy well, and can result in a final product that is " spongy about the bore ", bronze is more flexible than iron and therefore less prone to bursting when exposed to high pressure ; cast iron cannon are less expensive and more durable generally than bronze and withstand being fired more times without deteriorating.

In place of less easily available tin, arsenic was added to copper in the Bronze Age to harden it ; like the hatters, crazed by their exposure to mercury, who inspired Lewis Carroll's famous character of the Mad Hatter, most smiths of the Bronze Age would have suffered from chronic poisoning as a result of their livelihood.

At the end of this period a new landscape emerges: the northern Canaanite cities still existed, more or less intact, and became the Phoenicians ; the highlands behind the coastal plains, previously largely uninhabited, were rapidly filling with villages, largely Canaanite in their basic culture but without the Bronze Age city-state structure ; and along the southern coastal plain there are clear signs that a non-Canaanite people had taken over the former Canaanite cities while adopting almost all aspects of Canaanite culture.

Bronze is superior to just copper, by being harder, being more resistant to corrosion, and by having a lower melting point ( thereby requiring less fuel to melt and cast ).

Superb Fairywrens also commonly play host to the brood parasite Horsfield's Bronze Cuckoo ( Chrysococcyx basalis ) and, less commonly, the Shining Bronze Cuckoo ( C. lucidus ) and Fan-tailed Cuckoo ( Cacomantis flabelliformis ).

Although there are several Bronze Age sites on the island, they provide less dramatic remains.

Bronze, whilst easier to work with, was much less commonly available ( requiring copper and tin, which are almost never found in close proximity ).

Thus, early Neolithic graves tend to show equal distribution of goods, suggesting a more or less classless society, while in Chalcolithic and Bronze Age burials, rich grave goods are concentrated in " chieftain " graves ( barrows ), indicating social stratification.

Thus, much is known regarding the sword during the Bronze Age but less so in the early Iron Age.

While most automobile producers limited themselves to a single color combination, and Ford relied exclusively on the fast-drying Japan Black lacquer which cured in a matter of hours, Jordan automobiles were available in no less than three colors of red-" Apache Red ", " Mercedes Red ", and " Savage Red "- as well as " Ocean Sand Gray ", " Venetian Green ", " Briarcliff Green ", " Egyptian Bronze ", " Liberty Blue ", and " Chinese Blue ".

For most Bronze Age swords ( except for those in China ), copper was alloyed with around 10-12 % tin, making the sword strong, but not brittle.

Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was the first alloy discovered, during the prehistoric period now known as the bronze age ; it was harder than pure copper and originally used to make tools and weapons, but was later superseded by metals and alloys with better properties.

Documents executed since 4 August 1944 in connection with recommendations for the award of decorations of higher degree than the Bronze Star Medal cannot be used as the basis for an award under this paragraph.

During the late Neolithic henge sites were constructed, single burials began to become more commonplace and by the Bronze Age it is possible that even where chambered cairns were still being built they had become the burial places of prominent individuals rather than of communities as a whole.

The civilisation that had developed there since the end of the Bronze Age was organised along entirely different lines than those of the Middle East, consisting of numerous small City-States fielding citizen militias.

Contact with the continent was generally at a lower point than in the Bronze Age, although it was not insignificant.

Other theories have proposed an even more substantial input in the Early Bronze Age than was previously thought.

Canaan in the Late Bronze Age was a shadow of what it had been centuries earlier: many cities were abandoned, others shrank in size, and the total settled population was probably not much more than a hundred thousand.

In the Late Bronze Age there were no more than about 25 villages in the highlands, but this increased to over 300 by the end of Iron I, while the settled population doubled from 20, 000 to 40, 000.

In the age known as the Nordic Bronze Age, the area had some shipping of furs to northern Germany and the Roman army, but not much is known from that time other than the area being inhabited ; there has also been older finds from 3000-4000 BC.

Archaeologists and historians see more continuity than discontinuity between these highland settlements and the preceding Late Bronze Canaanite culture ; certain features such as ceramic repertoire and agrarian settlement plans have been said to be distinctives of highland sites, and collar-rimmed jars and four-roomed houses have been said to be intrinsically " Israelite ," but have also been said to belong to a commonly shared culture throughout Iron I Canaan.

The Trundholm sun chariot dates to the Nordic Bronze Age, more than 2, 500 years earlier than the Norse myth, but is often associated with it.

Sword blades longer than were rare and not practical until the late Bronze Age because at longer lengths, the tensile strength of bronze starts to decrease radically, and consequently longer blades would bend easily.

Many surviving examples of metal shields are generally felt to be ceremonial rather than practical, for example the Yetholm-type shields of the Bronze Age or the Iron Age Battersea shield.

The climate during the Early Bronze Age ( c. 2500-1400 BC ) is thought to have been warmer than at present, as there are many remains from this period in what are now bleak uplands.

Basch postulates that the boat “ cannot have been propelled by more than four oarsmen … so it can hardly be other than a fishing boat .” As opposed to other Early Bronze Age ship and boat models, this model was not found in a burial context.

The original evidence recognized by Gimbutas, however, of Neolithic societies being more egalitarian than the Bronze Age Indo-European and Semitic patriarchies remains valid.