The Bronze Age is the time period when people made tools from an alloy (a mixture of metals) called bronze. Bronze is a mixture of mainly copper and tin: usually nine parts copper to one part tin. Materials like wood and stone were also used for tools, but bronze was better for cutting and chopping, and was easy to shape. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age. Humans learned how to smelt, melt, cast, rivet, and to forge copper and bronze. The bow seems to have been invented by the late Paleolithic or early Mesolithic. Image taken from page 301 of "Primitive Man" by Louis Figuier. Revised translation from the French by Edward Burnet Tylor. Illustrated with scenes of primitive life, 1870.