Campfires are about 200 °C short of the temperature needed, so some propose that the first smelting of copper may have occurred in pottery kilns. (The development of copper smelting in the Andes, which is believed to have occurred independently of the Old World, may have occurred in the same way.)

The earliest current evidence of copper smelting, dating from between 5500 BC and 5000 BC, has been found in Plocnik and Belovode,