The Three-Age System
By User:PHG, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31533 , By Nationalmuseet, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90400464 , and By Chamberi - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26141910
The three-age system is a way of looking at pre-history, though there is overlap into early historical periods in several regions. The three periods are the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. Sometimes, a fourth age, the Copper Age, is added between the Stone Age and Bronze Age. It was adopted during the 19th century by C. J. Thomsen between 1816-1825 as he classified a collection of an archaeological exhibition and arranged it chronologically. He noted a broad succession of stone, bronze, and iron in the artifacts. This appealed to other British researchers so it entered broad usage as a relative chronology through Europe, the Near East, and the Mediterranean. In 1865, the Stone Age was further divided into the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) and the Neolithic (New Stone Age). In 1872, the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, was added.
By Gustave Moreau - Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34908213
Dividing history into ages based on metal usage wasn't first thought of in the 19th century. Hesiod, the ancient Greek poet that lived sometime between 750-650 BCE, wrote of the five Ages of Man in his poem Works and Days. The successive Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, and Iron Ages of Man indicate the moral descent of man, with only bronze and iron being the metals used. He knew, from artifacts of Greek society, that bronze was used prior to iron becoming preferred.
By Designed by “T. C.” (possibly Thomas Creech, died 1700); drawn and engraved by M. Burghers - T. Lucretius Carus of the Nature of Things (https://archive.org/details/tlucretiuscaruso01lucr/page/n5/mode/2up), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=127341911
Titus Lucretius Carus, a Roman poet and philosopher, took Hesiod's concept of ages of metal, but considered the progression a sign of growth and evolution. He wrote '[t]he earliest weapons were hands, nails and teeth. Next came stones and branches wrenched from trees, and fire and flame as soon as these were discovered. Then men learnt to use tough iron and copper. With copper they tilled the soil. With copper they whipped up the clashing waves of war, … Then by slow degrees the iron sword came to the fore; the bronze sickle fell into disrepute; the ploughman began to cleave the earth with iron'.
As research expanded outside the regions around the Mediterranean into East Asia, the Americas, and Sub-Saharan Africa, the limitations of the three-age system came more into focus. Some hold the view that it overly simplifies the complex circumstances by forcing them into a mold that doesn't fit. It is also a relative chronology, which newer dating methods, such as radiocarbon dating, renders more-or-less obsolete. Some also critique it as being 'unsound epochalism', that 'it need to be accepted that, for example, there never was actually such a thing as "the Bronze Age."' Another criticism is that it fails as a cross-cultural model, being Eurocentric, as it was originally focused on Europe and the Near East, and it has to be stretched and twisted to fit other cultures, with some skipping 'ages' in their development, or developing at different rates than those around the Mediterranean.
