Three-legged cauldron, mid-2nd millennium BC, Zhengzhou Province.

This large vessel, standing more than 21 inches high, is an early effort at bronze casting in this region of China. Bronze is an alloy, a mixture of copper and tin. It was the first metal to be widely used in many parts of the world. In China, where the Bronze Age lasted about two thousand years, ending in the late first millennium BC, bronze was used primarily for the casting of drinking vessels and food containers such as the 3-legged cauldron, which played a central role in ancestor worship and state rituals.