Copper smelters from 3,000 years ago may have experimented with materials just enough to launch the Iron Age. The Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age as the refining process of iron was discovered.

Steel has underpinned modern life for centuries, but it comes at an expensive cost. The industry is responsible for nearly 7 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions, driven by blast ...

Copper smelters at the site used copper ores that lacked iron. Adding the iron oxide hematite to the furnace helped the copper metal to separate more easily from the impurities in the ore. Credit: Dr.

AI-generated illustration. Credit: ZME Science/Midjourney. Three thousand years ago, a group of metalworkers in what is now southern Georgia were trying to solve a problem. Their copper ores were ...

Buried deep in the south Georgia rolling hills, a tiny archaeological site has been rewriting history. Uncovered in the late 1950s, the Kvemo Bolnisi workshop was considered to be one of the ...

Around 1200 BCE, a remote furnace in the hills of southern Georgia may have unwittingly ignited one of humanity’s most significant technological revolutions, paving the way for the Iron Age. In a ...

Ancient copper smelters may have accidentally set the stage for the Iron Age. At a 3,000-year-old workshop in Georgia, researchers discovered that metalworkers were using iron oxide not to smelt iron ...