What possessed man 5000 years ago to produce arsenic? And then why use it in forging swords.
Did someone say this stuff is deadly. Look what it did to Ugg. Let’s use it to make swords!!!
Re arsenic: I would bet they were trying to create gold from other metals and came up with this alloy.
From an article I read...the arsenic is naturally occurring and the resulting objects are made from the ore containing both arsenic and copper.
It's present in a lot of ores and comes out as a byproduct of smelting the other ore. Someone noticed that adding it to copper (or smelting copper ore with a high arsenic content) made the copper harder.