Bronze Age sword

Bronze Age swords appeared from around the 17th century BC, in the Black Sea and Aegean regions, as a further development of the dagger. They were replaced by iron swords during the early part of the 1st millennium BC. Typical Bronze Age swords were between 60 and 80 cm long, significantly shorter weapons are categorized as short swords or daggers. From an early time swords with lengths in excess of 100 cm were also produced. The necessary technology appears to have been developed in the Aegean around 1700 BC, using alloys of copper and tin or arsenic. Before about 1400 BC swords remained mostly limited to the Aegean and southeastern Europe. During the final centuries of the 2nd millennium BC their use spread to Central Europe and Britain, to the Near East, Central Asia, Northern India and to China.