Concerning all this earlier activity relating to the search for and the processing of metals, Childe makes an important point about the inventiveness of humanity and the uniqueness of their discovery:

Childe suggests that the processing of copper, initiating the Age of Metals, led to the emergence of specialists that were withdrawn from the process of primary production itself. ‘Metallurgy’, he wrote, ‘is a full-time job’. There is certainly a considerable specialisation involved in metal-working and Childe was right about the role of metallurgy, but not altogether correct in saying this was necessarily full-time. Recently in Africa, I knew a number of iron-workers, smiths, among the LoDagaa of Northern Ghana, but none were full-time. Low-grade iron ore, in the form of laterite, was available everywhere. They worked at iron and ran smithies, though as we will see in Chapter 9 the critical smelting had by then been replaced by the importation of cheap metal, mass-produced by casting in European factories like the ones at Middlesbrough in northern England, a technique which came late to Europe. Africa had simple forges, but no smelting now since the cast iron was purchased ready-made (Map 3). The smiths, like my friend Bonyiri among the LoDagaa, were part-time, farming as anyone else the rest of the day. The money people made from the forge they dedicated to its shrine, although using the money for daily living.