Scientists have discovered the world’s earliest known large-scale copper smelting industry – in the Balkans.

It is considered the world’s first major industrial revolution – an extraordinary technological breakthrough which occurred 7,000 years ago in the Balkans. Archaeologists are now also able to reveal, for the first time, exactly when the Stone Age began to end – and when the age of metallurgy first got under way.

The research has been carried out by a London-based scientific team which has succeeded in locating the world’s earliest known large-scale smelting industry – at Belovode, a
settlement site of the prehistoric Vinca culture, 70 miles south-east of the Serbian capital, Belgrade.

Although the smelting furnaces themselves have not been located, the archaeologists have unearthed telltale evidence of the smelting process: fragments of once molten slag and copper metal, and lumps of copper ore.

The new research has revealed that hundreds of thousands of axes and other metal artefacts were being manufactured in the Balkans seven millennia ago.

Before humanity discovered how to make metal, all heavy-duty tools had to be fashioned out of stone, bone or antler. But with the development of metallurgy, much stronger and more durable axes, knives and other tools could be made. Copper axes were more efficient than their predecessors and could be much more easily renewed than stone ones.

But the invention of metal smelting was much more than a technological revolution. In fact, it had a significant impact on human development, helping to accelerate forest clearance and boost agriculture. It also helped increase settlement and population sizes and played a key role in society becoming more hierarchical.

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