What era is called by historians for the high achievement of Yin bronze craft in Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties?

Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties are called the "Bronze Age", because from the third generation, bronze was used to cast ritual vessels and weapons for sacrifice and war, as well as bronze wares.

The bronze age is a stage of human material and cultural development, marked by the use of bronzes. Bronze is an alloy of copper (pure copper) and tin or lead. Buried in the soil, the color turns blue-gray due to oxidation, hence the name bronze. Its melting point is between 700 and 900℃, which is lower than that of copper (1083℃). Bronze containing tin 10% has a hardness of 4.7 times that of copper and good performance.

In the early bronze age, bronzes accounted for a small proportion, even stone tools were the main ones. The proportion gradually increased in the middle and late stages. With the increase of bronzes, the productivity level of agriculture and handicraft industry is improved, and the material living conditions are gradually enriched. After the appearance of bronzes, it played an epoch-making role in improving social productivity.

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According to statistics, there are tens of thousands of bronzes with inscriptions unearthed in Shang Dynasty and Western Zhou Dynasty, and bronzes without inscriptions are several times this number. In the Shang Dynasty and the Western Zhou Dynasty, it was impossible to provide such a large amount of copper raw materials without developed mining and smelting industries.

Most of the ancient copper mine sites in Shang and Zhou Dynasties were found in the contact zone between igneous rocks and marble. Because the rocks in the contact zone are relatively broken, it is easier to mine. Due to precipitation and leaching, the copper element on the surface is relatively concentrated in the contact zone, and the copper grade is gradually enriched from top to bottom, forming an oxide ore enrichment zone. This condition made it an ideal copper mining place for ancient ancestors.

The minerals here are mainly malachite, chrysocolla and chalcopyrite, all of which are oxide minerals. Natural copper is often found in the deep sea. Tonglu Mountain in Daye, as its name implies, is a copper-green hill. After every heavy rain there, many green malachite fragments are exposed on the ground and everywhere. Therefore, its copper resources were developed and utilized a long time ago, and the mining remains of 1 1 No.2 and No.7 ore bodies are considered as the remains of the Western Zhou Dynasty or earlier.

At that time, the method of smelting copper ore was to put ore and charcoal into a smelting furnace for smelting. Because these ores are oxide ores, this smelting is called oxide ore reduction smelting. Although only the vertical copper smelting furnaces in the Spring and Autumn Period were discovered, the smelting furnaces in the Shang Dynasty and the Western Zhou Dynasty have not been seen. However, the simulation experiment proves that the shaft furnace used for copper smelting in the Spring and Autumn Period has good smelting performance, which can continuously feed, continuously discharge slag and intermittently discharge copper.

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