How did a person learn to melt metals and what prompted him to do this?
The book tells about the history of their production and use, as well as about why humanity switched to completely new smelting technologies and mastered metals such as copper, bronze, iron.
But the Bronze Age ended in a real disaster for many countries. At the end of it there is the collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite kingdom in Anatolia, Syria, Egypt is falling into decline. The collapse of culture throughout the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean is accompanied by a political and economic collapse, in which, in parallel with the decline of some civilizations, new civilizations and new ideologies were born. Scientists cannot come to a general conclusion about the causes of the «Bronze Age catastrophe».
It was at the same time (XIII century BC) that the transition of mankind from polytheism to monotheism took place. Why is the change in the religious views of our ancestors associated with the crisis period?
Glass producing has opened up new opportunities for humans. Of course, it all started with the simplest glass products. But with the development of physics and optics, it turned out that glass allows you to make unheard-of discoveries. Thanks to glass, new specific optical devices have appeared, designed for various physical and physico-chemical studies, spectral analyses. All astronomical discoveries are made with the help of a telescope. Without glass, we would not be able to enter the space age. But we are interested in when and why Sapiens began to get the first semblance of glass from sand. The book will tell you about this too. And after a person went from simple glass blowing to the production of vacuum flasks and connected it with electricity (another scientific breakthrough), humanity received the first lighting lamps, rapidly broke into the age of computer science and the atomic era.
The book will interest not only readers, but also scientists and specialists.
1. Fire
Neanderthals and fire
Culinary hypothesis
Taming the Fire
The price and importance of fire
Vegetable food and self-medication
Against microorganisms
2. Ceramics
Archaeological excavations of ceramics.
Microorganisms and ceramics. Possible causes of ceramics
Genes and ceramics
3. Funeral activities
Death in the animal world
Primates (modern times)
Homo heidelbergensis
Middle Paleolithic. Early homo sapiens
