Korean-style Bronze Sword

[Doctor]
This sword that you are looking at is the sword of the Bronze Age.

[Tourist]
Finally, a bronze sword! Doctor, please tell me why bronze swords weren’t common during the Bronze Age.

[Doctor]
Bronze is not a natural resource and the technological processes that are required to produce the alloy and cast it are complicated. That is why bronze was very valuable and only a few powerful people, clan leaders for example, would have possessed a bronze sword. Commoners would have used stone swords.

[Tourist]
Oh, I see. How could they have held it properly? It has such a short hilt.

[Doctor]
Aha! The pointed end towards the bottom is not the hilt itself, but the spike that would once have been inserted into a wooden hilt. The wood has since rotted away, so all that remains is the metal blade.

[Tourist]
I have one further question to ask you. This was something I was curious about from the start. Why is it not bronze in color? No matter how hard I look at it, it still looks green to me.

[Doctor]
Ah! We assume that the Bronze Age began on the Korean Peninsula around about 1000 BC. The sword is so old that the bronze has corroded and is now covered with verdigris. It would originally have been a very bright bronze color.

[Tourist]
I guess it would have been a splendid sight, seeing the clan leaders strutting around with their bronze swords hanging at their waists during the Bronze Age.

[Doctor]
Yes! We also believe that the bronze swords were used more as a status symbol, signifying power and wealth. Why don’t we take a look at another one of the essential symbols of the head of a clan?