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<blockquote data-quote="ephemeron" data-source="post: 3159036" data-attributes="member: 21477">Perhaps the person you talked to was thinking of arsenic bronze?&nbsp; &quot;Regular&quot; bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, but arsenic can be used instead of tin (and was used first).&nbsp; I don't know what exactly exposure to arsenic bronze would to do a person, but suspect that smiths would be most affected, followed by the wielders of arsenic-bronze weapons, followed by people wounded with such weapons.My understanding is that iron replaced bronze, in Europe and the Near East at least, more because of the relative scarcity of tin and relative abundance of iron than the properties of the bronze and iron.&nbsp; If anything, it takes less skill and technology to make a decent bronze weapon than a decent iron weapon; bronze is pretty tough on its own and can be worked at lower temperatures, but the Iron Age didn't really happen until people figured out ways to build hotter smelting furnaces and to case-harden iron (that is, convert the outer layers of a piece of iron into steel).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="ephemeron, post: 3159036, member: 21477"] Perhaps the person you talked to was thinking of arsenic bronze? "Regular" bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, but arsenic can be used instead of tin (and was used first). I don't know what exactly exposure to arsenic bronze would to do a person, but suspect that smiths would be most affected, followed by the wielders of arsenic-bronze weapons, followed by people wounded with such weapons. My understanding is that iron replaced bronze, in Europe and the Near East at least, more because of the relative scarcity of tin and relative abundance of iron than the properties of the bronze and iron. If anything, it takes less skill and technology to make a decent bronze weapon than a decent iron weapon; bronze is pretty tough on its own and can be worked at lower temperatures, but the Iron Age didn't really happen until people figured out ways to build hotter smelting furnaces and to case-harden iron (that is, convert the outer layers of a piece of iron into steel). [/QUOTE]

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