Image credit: Robster1983/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
Posted on 08/30/2024 5:35:53 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
On a warm spring day in 2019, researchers bored into the earth beneath Cairo's urban streets... Some 4,600 years earlier, as laborers constructed the Great Pyramid, the contemporary dig spot lay on the sandy floor of Khufu Harbor.
In this ancient harbor—the world's oldest known port—researchers said they've identified the first major instance of human-induced metal contamination...
The researchers used geochemical tracers to investigate metalworking activities around ancient Khufu Harbor. Located along a now defunct branch of the Nile near the Giza Plateau, the harbor was essential for transporting materials and was the site of a major copper toolmaking industry. These tools, some of which workers alloyed with arsenic for added durability, included blades, chisels, and drills to work materials like limestone, wood, and textiles. Researchers used inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to measure levels of copper and arsenic, as well as of aluminum, iron, and titanium, with six carbon-14 dates to establish a chronological framework...
Contamination during this Predynastic period suggests that human occupation and metalworking at Giza began more than 200 years earlier than previously documented.
Although researchers have found direct evidence of Predynastic civilization in only 13 graves north of Giza, Morhange believes the geoarchaeological record yields more clues. With so much focus on the pyramids and other tombs, he explained, previous researchers might have overlooked evidence of the site's earlier occupation...
Andrew Shortland, an archaeological scientist from Cranfield University in the United Kingdom who was not involved in the study, expressed concerns about the proposed timeline. "I don't think six dates is enough," he said, referring to the number of carbon-14 dates used.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Thanks for the link!
Those bass turds’ descendants owe somebody “reparations”.
bkmk
Sure we had human-induced metal contamination[copper], but we also never had a bacterial infection, lol.
With all those tests, its a wonder they did not determine the copper’s origin.
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