Before the widespread use of iron and steel, swords were made from copper, and then from alloys of copper with tin or arsenic - bronze. Bronze is very resistant to corrosion, therefore we have a lot of archaeological finds of bronze swords, however, their attribution and precise dating are often very difficult.
Bronze is a fairly durable material that holds sharpening well. In most cases, bronze was used with a tin content of about 10%, characterized by moderate hardness and relatively high ductility, but in China bronze was used with a tin content of up to 20% - harder, but more fragile (sometimes only blades were made of hard bronze, and the inner part of the blade is softer).
Bronze is an precipitation hardening alloy and cannot be hardened like steel, but it can be significantly hardened by cold deformation (hammering) of the cutting edges. Bronze cannot "spring" like hardened steel, but a blade made of it can bend within significant limits without breaking or losing properties - once straightened, it can be used again. Often, to prevent deformation, massive ribs were present on the bronze blades. Long blades of bronze had to be especially prone to bending, therefore they were used quite rarely, the typical length of a bronze sword blade is no more than 60 centimeters. Nevertheless, it is completely wrong to call short bronze swords exclusively piercing - modern experiments, on the contrary, have shown a very high cutting ability of this weapon,its relatively short length limited only the combat distance.
Since the main technology for processing bronze was casting, it was relatively easy to make a more effective complexly curved blade from it, therefore the bronze weapons of ancient civilizations often had a curved shape with a one-sided sharpening - these include the ancient Egyptian khopesh, the ancient Greek mahaira and the copis borrowed from the Persians by the Greeks. It is worth noting that all of them, according to modern classification, refer to sabers or cleavers, not swords.
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The title of the most ancient sword in the world today claims a bronze sword, which was found by the Russian archaeologist A. D. Rezepkin in the Republic of Adygea, in a stone tomb of the Novosvobodnaya archaeological culture. This sword is currently on display at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. This bronze prototype sword (total length 63 cm, handle length 11 cm) dates from the second third of the 4th millennium BC. e. It should be noted that according to modern standards, this is more a dagger than a sword, although the shape of the weapon suggests that it was quite suitable for chopping blows. In the megalithic burial, the bronze prototype was symbolically bent.
Before this find, the swords found by the Italian archaeologist Palmieri were considered the most ancient, who discovered a treasure with weapons in the upper reaches of the Tigris in the ancient palace of Arslantepe: spearheads and several swords (or long daggers) from 46 to 62 cm long. The findings of Palmieri date back to the end of the 4th millennium.
The next major find is swords from Arslantepe (Malatya). From Anatolia, swords are gradually spreading to both the Middle East and Europe.
A sword from Bet Dagan near Jaffa, dating from 2400-2000 BC. e., had a length of about 1 meter and was made of almost pure copper with a small admixture of arsenic.
Also very long bronze swords dating from about 1700 BC. e., were found in the area of the Minoan civilization - the so-called swords "type A", which had a total length of about 1 meter and even more. These were mostly stabbing swords with a tapering blade, apparently designed to defeat a well-armored target.
Very ancient swords were found during excavations of monuments of the Harrap (Indus) civilization, with dating according to some sources up to 2300 BC. e. In the area of the culture of ocher painted ceramics, many swords dating back to 1700-1400 were found. BC e.
Bronze swords have been known in China since at least the Shang state, with the earliest finds dating back to around 1200 BC. eh..
Many Celtic bronze swords have been found in the UK.
Iron swords have been known since at least the 8th century BC. e, and are actively used from the VI century BC. e. Although soft, non-quenching iron did not have any particular advantages over bronze, weapons made of it quickly became cheaper and more affordable than bronze - iron is found in nature much more often than copper, and the tin necessary to obtain bronze in the ancient world was generally mined only in multiple locations. Polybius mentions that the Gallic iron swords of the 3rd century BC. e. often bent in battle, forcing the owners to straighten them. Some researchers believe that the Greeks simply misinterpreted the Gallic custom of bending sacrificial swords, but the very ability to bend without kinking is a distinctive feature of iron swords (made of low carbon steel,not amenable to hardening) - a sword made of hardened steel can only be broken, not bent.
In China, steel swords, significantly superior in quality to both bronze and iron, appeared already at the end of the Western Zhou period, although they did not become widespread until the Qin or even Han era, that is, the end of the 3rd century BC. e.
At about the same time, the inhabitants of India began to use weapons made of steel, including a similar welded Damascus one. According to the periphery of the Eritrean Sea, in the 1st century AD. e. Indian steel blades came to Greece.
Found in Vetulonia, the Etruscan sword of the 7th century. BC e. was obtained by combining several parts with different carbon content: the inner part of the blade was made of steel with a carbon content of about 0.25%, the blades were made of iron with a carbon content of less than 1%. Another Roman-Etruscan sword of the 4th century BC e. has a carbon content of up to 0.4%, which implies the use of carburization in its manufacture. Nevertheless, both swords were of low quality metal, with a large amount of impurities.
The ubiquitous transition to blades made of hardened carbon steel took a long time - so, in Europe, it ended only around the 10th century AD. e. In Africa, iron swords (mambel) were used as early as the 19th century (although it is worth noting that iron processing in Africa began very early, and, with the exception of the Mediterranean coast, Egypt and Nubia, Africa "skipped" the Bronze Age, immediately moving to iron processing).
The most famous in classical antiquity were the following types of thrust-cutting swords:
- Xyphos
An ancient Greek sword with a total length of no more than 70 cm, a pointed blade, leaf-shaped, less often straight;
- Gladius
The common name for all swords among the Romans, today is usually associated with a specific short sword of the legionary;
- Akinak
Scythian sword - from VII BC e.;
- Mission
Meotian sword - from the 5th to the 2nd century. BC e.
Later, the Celts and Sarmatians began to use cutting swords. The Sarmatians used swords in equestrian combat, their length reached 110 cm. The crosshair of the Sarmatian sword is rather narrow (only 2-3 cm wider than the blade), the handle is long (from 15 cm), the pommel is in the form of a ring.
Spatha, which is of Celtic origin, was used by both foot soldiers and horsemen. The total length of the spat reached 90 cm, there was no cross, the pommel was massive, spherical. Initially, the spat had no point.
In the last century of the Roman Empire, spatha became the standard weapon of legionnaires - both cavalry and (a shorter version, sometimes called "half-spatha" - English semispatha) infantrymen. The latter option is considered a transition from the swords of antiquity to the weapons of the Middle Ages.