The production of bronze ensued when separate ores containing copper and tin were smelted together. This innovation may have been accidental, but the value of the stronger metal was not lost on ancient weapon and armor manufacturers. In time, the best proportion of tin to copper was found (about 1 part in 10). This discovery was an early triumph in metallurgy.

The Bronze Age marks the appearance of both the sword — the first weapon not to have a secondary use as a tool — and the phalanx. The phalanx was a block formation of armored infantrymen who each carried a long, bronze-tipped spear called a sarissa. Both Phillip II of Macedon and his son and successor, Alexander the Great, used the phalanx to devastating effect in their campaigns.

In an effort to protect their cities, Bronze Age civilizations improved their fortification methods. New masonry techniques and fortress designs that allowed overlapping fields of fire made seizing a fortified city harder than ever. To counter such defensive measures, the Assyrians pioneered the use of covered rams, and the Greeks made use of ballistae and siege towers. During an attack on Rhodes, the Macedonians made a siege tower so large that more than 3,000 men were required to move it up to the city walls.

Medicine made considerable progress in the Bronze Age as well. The Code of Hammurabi, which encapsulated the legal system of ancient Babylon, included laws that dealt with the practice of medicine. Egyptian papyri describing folk remedies and surgical techniques, with associated magical rites, also date from this period. Later, in Greece, the role of the supernatural in medicine was downplayed until, by the time of Hippocrates in the 5th Century BC, disease was being regarded as a bodily affliction with natural causes. Around 300 BC, the Greeks established a medical school in Alexandria, which continued to be a center of learning throughout the Roman era.

Formal education of the young can trace its roots back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but it was the Greeks who standardized and expanded its role. Whereas earlier schools were devoted to training scribes or teaching religion, schools in Greece taught physical education, literacy, good conduct and other subjects as well. Higher education also developed in Greece, open to all who had both spare time and money. The most famous example of the day was the Academy, founded by Plato circa 387 BC.