Materials through the ages



This axe was made thousands of years ago. The people living at that time could only use natural materials. They chose to use a stony material called flint because it could be chipped to give a sharp edge. They chose wood because it is lightweight and so it was easy to lift the axe head and swing it through the air. They chose animal gut because it is strong and flexible and could be used to bind the flint axehead to the wood. They used animal skins for their clothes because these were easy to make up. Gut could be used to fasten the hides together.

Why was there a time called the Stone Age?
When archaeologists dug up the remains of people who lived long ago in the past they found that many of the tools the people used were made from stone. These people used rocks and minerals for making axes, arrowheads and scrapers for cleaning animal skins. The archeologists called this time the Stone Age because stone was such an important material in the lives of the people who lived then.
Did Stone Age people use other materials beside stone?
Yes. They used animal skins as clothes and bags. They used bones to make hammers, harpoons and fish hooks. They used wood to make the handles of axes and spears and to make bows and arrow shafts. They used bird feathers for the flights on their arrows
Are any other ages named after materials?
Yes. After the Stone Age there was the Bronze Age and then the Iron Age. The Bronze Age began when people discovered how to make the metal called bronze. They used it to make swords, knives, spears, arrowheads, shields, pins, brooches and curved cutting blades called sickles.
One problem with bronze was that it was not a very strong material. In fact, when bronze age soldiers fought each other they had to stop occasionally to straighten their swords because they had become bent in the battle!
When people discovered how to make iron they found that this metal was much stronger and it replaced bronze as the most widely used metal. Iron was used for making helmets, saws, razors, horseshoes and even mirrors. Later it became used for railway lines, machines and a multitude of other things. Iron and steel are still the most widely used metals.


Where did people find metals?
They found metals like copper, gold and silver in the ground. These metals occur naturally. Most other metals cannot be found on their own, but are combined in a form that is not easy to use. The metal can only be released when the rocks, called ores, are heated up.
Some metals were probably discovered accidentally in the hearth stones that people used around their camp fires stop the fire spreading. When some kinds of stones got very hot liquid metal flowed out of them. The first two metals to be extracted this way were tin and copper. Iron could not be found this way because it needed a much hotter fire that can be got in an open fire. However, soft lumps of impure iron were probably formed in stones of camp fires and these could be hammered into new shapes.
Where did people find bronze?
They did not find it. They made it by melting copper and tin and mixing the two liquid metals together. The mixture is called bronze.
Materials like bronze, which are made by people, are called manufactured materials. The materials they are made from, like copper and tin, are called raw materials.
Are manufactured materials used today?
Yes. Most materials we use today are manufactured. For example, glass, brick, concrete, plastic metal, paper and pottery are all manufactured materials. Each one has a range of properties which make it particularly useful. For example paper is lightweight, and has a smooth surface which can be written on easily.
The great advantage of manufactured materials is that we can make them with the properties we want. For example, when people decided to explore space new materials with new properties had to be invented. Space suits, for example, are made from materials that protect people from the cold of space, the heat of the sunshine and the fast-moving pieces of space dust which may hit them.