Everything is made of something.
Follow a material from the rock it comes out of to the object in your hand — through the minerals, elements, alloys and processes in between. Every figure is shown with the source it came from and how well established it is.
From source to use
Bronze — is used to make (cast in a two-piece mould with a core, which is what bronze does better than the copper it replaced) → Bronze socketed axe — is associated with → Bronze Age
Start at any point and you can follow the material onwards, or back to where it came from.
Start somewhere
Mineral
Quartz
The second most abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, and the reference point for hardness 7 on the Mohs scale.
Element
Copper
A soft, ductile metal with exceptional electrical conductivity, and one of the first metals humans worked.
Mineral
Diamond
Carbon in a cubic lattice — the hardest naturally occurring substance, and one of the best thermal conductors known.
Alloy
Bronze
Copper alloyed with tin — harder than either constituent, and the first engineered material to define an age.
Material
Portland cement
The hydraulic binder in almost all modern concrete, made by burning limestone with clay.
Mineral
Hematite
Iron oxide — the most important ore of iron, and the red pigment used since the Palaeolithic.
Browse by kind
How to read this site
Read it in either direction
Every material here is linked to what it is made from and to what is made of it. So you can start at an ore and end at an axe, or start at a cutting tool and work back to the rock it came out of.
Disagreement is shown, not resolved
Reference works genuinely disagree about hardness ranges, discovery dates and compositions. Where they do, we record the disagreement rather than quietly choosing a winner.