"The increase in metallurgical activity put a great burden on [14th century B.C. Cyprus'] woods as charcoal was the fuel for smelting and refining copper. One hundred and twenty pine trees were required to prepare the six tons of charcoal needed to produce one sixty-pound ingot of copper, deforesting almost four acres.
Underwater archaeologists found onboard a Bronze Age shipwreck two hundred ingots of copper that had been mined and smelted in Cyprus. The production of just this shipload cost the island almost 24,000 pine trees.
The copper industry's consumption of wood deforested, on the average, four or five square miles of woods each year. Another four or five square miles of forest were cut to supply fuel for heating and cooking and for industries such as potteryworks and lime kilns."
-A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization by John Perlin