Six thousand years ago, people living in the southern Levant moved from small, autonomous village lifestyles to complex social structures with innovations and products that remain today. Humans discovered how to irrigate the desert and grow fruit crops, and transform copper ore into a useable metal, for the first time. Pairing this with their artistic genius, people of the Chalcolithic period, or Copper Age, created stunning symbols of rank and power - metal standards, crowns and mace heads - and utilitarian objects unearthed by archaeologists in the Cave of the Treasure and other sites. Thomas Levy’s adventurous journey with a team of international scientists to re-create the copper smelting processes used by our inventive ancestors is the highlight of this fascinating book.