From around 3300 BCE, metalworkers in the Near East and Anatolia learned to alloy copper with tin to make bronze, a metal far harder and more durable than copper or stone. From around 1200 BCE the smelting of iron, which required higher temperatures, spread the use of an even cheaper and more abundant metal. These metals produced superior tools, weapons and implements and supported specialised craft workshops.
Bronze armed and equipped the armies and craft economies that sustained the first city-states, while cheaper iron later put ploughs, axes and tools within reach of ordinary farmers, extending cultivation and settlement onto heavier soils and new land.