Posted on 08/06/2011 4:11:06 PM PDT by Renfield
The Shipping of Michigan Copper across the Atlantic in the Bronze Age (Isle Royale and Keweenaw Peninsula, c. 2400BC-1200 BC)
Summary
Recent scientific literature has come to the conclusion that the major source of the copper that swept through the European Bronze Age after 2500 BC is unknown. However, these studies claim that the 10 tons of copper oxhide ingots recovered from the late Bronze Age (1300 BC) Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of Turkey was “extraordinarily pure” (more than 99.5% pure), and that it was not the product of smelting from ore. The oxhides are all brittle “blister copper”, with voids, slag bits, and oxides, created when the oxhides were made in multiple pourings outdoors over wood fires. Only Michigan Copper is of this purity, and it is known to have been mined in enormous quantities during the Bronze Age....
(Excerpt) Read more at grahamhancock.com ...
I think people got around more than we thought we did back then.
L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland was only sporadically occupied by small numbers of Vikings, but we at least have the remains of building foundations and a few other artifacts.
Are you aware of anything in the Great Lakes area that can't be easily explained away by current archaeological theories?
Interesting. I spent a few months working at White Pine mine demonstrating a “low profile” mining jumbo. >PS
Interesting. I spent a few months working at White Pine mine demonstrating a “low profile” mining jumbo. >PS
Its all hard rock mining. You have to have the crushers, the mills and all to do it. Its not Gold that is placer type gold like they have in Alaska..although there is a tiny bit like that.
I understand that the Ropes mine was at about 2500 tons to the ounce before it closed back down. But, there was also no exploration as that was a old closed mine that was re-opened.
Takes a lot of money to explore and develop mineral production. What geologist have been saying is that this area was one time one of the highest mountain ranges in the world. In these ancient mountains there are minerals.
Up around this area, there is a lot of sulfur in the water. What causes that sulfur?
But I’m with ya. If we dont go for it, it aint never gonna happen.
Yes let's go for it, I just drove through PA and got to see a lot of pickup trucks full of mud with plates from Texas and elsewhere, and getting off the highway with an impromptu turnaround got me in a drive that had a sign that said something something LLC Drilling.
You guessed it, Shale Gas, and jobs, why aren't we doing it here....
Most of the artifacts in North America which were suggestive of PreColumbian transoceanic contacts (PCTC for the duration of this message)have only survived as photos or drawings, because there has been such a strong bias against PCTC for over a century now. You’ve probably heard the story of the barge full of unacceptable artifacts and finds which the Smithsonian had towed out into the Atlantic a ways and dumped. It’s a tactic more familiar to historians of the rise of the Third Reich or Pol Pot. Like the recent debt ceiling / budget struggle, it was a political act.
The earliest peopling of the Americas used to be dated at about 1000 BC at the earliest. There was resistance to this idea, due to the massive diversity (particularly south of the Rio Grande) in language, culture, architecture, and written language. Louis Leakey, as a visiting lecturer, was probably as responsible as anyone for breaking down the resistance to the silly notion that humans had only been in the Americas for 3000 years. His Calico site dig didn’t establish what he thought it did, though.
The Clovis “revolution” grew out of a range of finds which tended not to be found in stratified contexts (that is, a series of stone artifact styles, found one on top of the other, in any one site, showing a long habitation), but it pushed back the human presence in North America some thousands of years. There wasn’t an exact date, just estimates based on depths of the finds, and other estimates of the length of time it might take for these different knapping techniques to develop and succeed previous styles. The 1000 BC date was still clung to like grim death by those who flat-out rejected any estimated dates for the artifacts.
The scientific dating of the Clovis artifacts (which later became the oldest acceptable strata) was finally accomplished after 1950, using radiocarbon (obviously the ancient campfire sites around which the stone artifacts were found), and pushed back human habitation by at least 9000 years. That became the new glass floor, beneath which dates could not fall. That’s been broken down by Topper in North America, and by Monte Verde in S America.
Back on topic — One of the lost (probably destroyed, but it might someday emerge somewhere on the U of M campus where it was taken) inscription stones was found up by Petoskey I think, otherwise east of there, near the shoreline. Whatever the context was, and the artifact itself, is gone, although the general findspot is known.
Other info has emerged in recent years regarding the copper — the trade networks in the PreColumbian Americas were far-reaching, and upper peninsula copper has (AFAIK) been found in South- and Central American PreColumbian contexts. It may have got there step by step, hand to hand — the usual ex cathedra claim — but I think that idea is fairly insulting to the capabilities of PreColumbian Americans.
Regardless, it doesn’t exactly mitigate against copper trafficking across the Atlantic in ancient times, now does it? :’)
Now if it was tin that would be another thing. Tin was indeed rare and needed but copper was all over the place.
There’s another Barry Fell anecdote, maybe in one of the books (if not, in ESOP), in which he notes that the first evidence of PreColumbian contact comes from Columbus himself — on one of the islands visited on the first voyage, an old guy was wearing a shiny object as the dangler on a necklace. The geezer said he’d found it when a young man, while diving (for fish, mussels, or whatever) and had kept it since. Columbus or someone with him drew a likeness of the coin, which likeness is preserved, and it appears to have been a Phoenician coin — something Columbus would have known zero about.
Exclusive control over the supply, and lower costs — same as business operates now.
Crude oil and gas. Granted, rotting plant matter can cause it and there are lots of swamp around, but, it is really bad just around this area and wells test ok for bacteria. West of here there are as many swamps and the water is sweet.
Lots of limestone bedrock here and I wonder whats under that bedrock. I bet if they explored, they’d find either Natural Gas or Oil.
The Stonington Peninsula is strait across and its limestone bedrock there and they found some oil there. They just havent drilled for it here yet.
There are old legends about huge amounts of gold stored away in an unknown cave by Indians in northern Wisconsin. Maybe some of it came from Michigan or there is gold up there in N Wis too.
Thanks! Very interesting stuff!
Each time I come across something like this I always think of Genesis 4:22{Lamech’s other wife, Zillah, gave birth to a son named Tubal-cain. He became an expert in forging tools of bronze and iron. Tubal-cain had a sister named Naamah}
I wonder how much tech there really was pre-flood. It could have been as much as our bronze age or they could have been way ahead of that if you factor in the lost civilization stories such as Atlantis. Plus how much of world was discovered before the flood.
Finds like this makes me want to get all Indiana Jones and become a Archeology Adventurer roaming the world. :)
Those Greeks were everywhere before there was somewhere....
It makes no sense to make a dangerous trip across the sea wasting time and money when the same product is available right on your doorstep.
Tin was rare, copper was common. For tin you would make the voyage. In fact they did, to the British Isles and to the Black Sea area. But they did not travel for copper. There was copper in the Sinai. There was copper in Asia Minor. There was copper in Europe. There was copper in Africa. There was copper in the Middle East.
I'm open to Phoenicians visiting North America, but it would be quite an undertaking to have them work these mines. Plus, there are rapids and cataracts on the St. Lawrence where portages would have to be maintained. It would be an enormous effort.
An easier theory is that the Native Americans worked the mines because they heard of markets on the East Coast and Central and South America.
I mostly agree, and that’s the point I was trying to make up above — that a trade network that reaches from Lake Superior to the Yucatan across the hostile territories without any overall governance makes crossing the Atlantic look tame by comparison. :’) The Vikings (and the English after them) entered the North American interior via Hudson’s Bay — during the medieval warming Scandinavians reached the Bering Strait by sailing east, because the route was open in the summers (private communication from a descendant of traders, for those who need citations). The Phoenicians (and others, for that matter) may have been chronologically well-placed to use the Arctic Ocean in that same way.
If Phoenicians were trading with Native Americans somewhere in North America for copper it would be really interesting to find out what they “paid.” It must have been cheaper or they wouldn’t go to the trouble. Probably impossible to find out, though.
My pleasure.
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