The Copper Age: How Metal Changed the World

KPBS | By KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published August 28, 2007 at 10:05 AM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

It is hard to image a world without metal.Journey to the Copper Age: Archaeology in the Holy Land is a new exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Man that tells the story of the profound changes that meta

Tom Fudge: It's hard to imagine a world without metal. But for most of human history that's how we lived... until the copper age. The age that began about six thousand years ago, and it had profound changes in the way people lived and organized their societies. That's what Thomas Levy writes in his book Journey to the Copper Age . Levy is working closely with San Diego's Museum of Man, which has mounted an exhibition of the same name.

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Thomas Levy, professor of Anthropology and Judaic Studies at UCSD. Levy has carried out major excavation projects in Israel at Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age sites. Since 1997, his research has focused on the role of mining and metallurgy in the evolution of societies in the Faynan district of southern Jordan. Levy is exhibit curator for the San Diego Museum of Man's special exhibit on the Copper Age, which is based on Levy's 1997 National Geographic expedition to the Holy Land. And Levy is author of the book Journey to the Copper Age.