Bronze Age was the period when people began to use bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, for tools and weapons. The Bronze Age is the second age of a three-age classification system originally developed to describe the prehistory of Europe. In this system, the Bronze Age followed the Stone Age and came before the Iron Age. During the Bronze Age, many cultures formed state governments, developed writing and other specialized technologies, and expanded trade relations.
Scholars disagree on exactly when the Bronze Age began. The Maikop culture of the Caucasus region first made a type of bronze—using arsenic instead of tin—around 3,500 B.C. Bronze developed slightly later in Mesopotamia and other parts of the Middle East, where its use was widespread from about 3,100 to 1,200 B.C.
In many parts of the world, cultural development did not follow a simple three-age progression. In the Middle East, for example, the Bronze Age followed the Chalcolithic Period, when people made tools of copper as well as stone. Today, scholars emphasize that the Bronze Age does not correspond to an exact period. Instead, they understand it as a broad stage of cultural development that varied by region.
