Stone hammers, and bronze and iron tools, were used to
make cooking pots, weapons, breast plates, and horse bits, which
were formed from moulds and/or forged by bronze smiths and
blacksmiths from iron extracted from iron ore heated in bowl-
shaped hearths. Typically one man operated the bellows to keep the
fire hot while another did the hammering. Bronze was made into
sickles for harvesting, razors for shaving, tweezers, straight
hair pins, safety pins for clothes, armlets, neck-rings, and
mirrors. Weapons included bows and arrows, flint and copper
daggers, bronze swords and spears, stone axes, and shields of wood
with bronze mountings. The bows and arrows probably evolved from
spear throwing rods. Kings in body armor fought with chariots
drawn by two horses. The horse harnesses had bronze fittings. The
chariots had wood wheels, later with iron rims. When bronze came
into use, there was a demand for its constituent parts: copper and
tin, which were traded by rafts on waterways and the sea. When
iron came into use, there were wrought iron axes, saws, adzes [ax
with curved blade used to dress wood], files, ploughshares,
harrows [set of spikes to break clods of earth on plowed land and
also to cover seed when sewn], scythes, billhooks [thick knife
with hooked point used to prune shrubs], and spits for hearths.
Lead was mined. There was some glassmaking of beads. Wrought iron
bars were used as currency.
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