The production of lime goes back thousands of years into prehistory and the usefulness of the lime products for humankind is fundamental in the development of civilisations and societies. The original discoveries of calcination and the first production and uses of lime are lost to time. It can be imagined that alongside the discoveries of metals, which is understood to be around 9,000 years ago, led to having fires and furnaces that could melt the metals and may have led to heating limestone or chalk rocks, thus causing unintended lime calcination. Copper, one of the earliest metals to be used, has a melting point of around 1000°C, which is slightly higher than the calcination temperature of calcium carbonate.
Whatever way lime was first discovered and made, the wide range of uses that lime products have, became fundamental to civilisation and society. In many key applications, lime products remain the dominant, solution of choice, despite the associated energy intensive and emissions issues. The future decarbonisation of lime production will see the continuation of the use of lime and thanks to product carbonation in many applications, lime will become part of the solution to help address climate change.