Free Republic

Copper futures topped $4 a pound on Friday for the first time since 2011, with expectations for a global economic recovery and a rise in renewable energy sources lifting the industrial metal’s demand outlook.Copper demand and prices “should continue to benefit from a recovering global economy and [a] transition to “green” energy sources,” said Brent Cook, an economic geologist and senior adviser for the newsletter Exploration Insights.

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru’s Congress voted to oust President Martin Vizcarra on Monday in an impeachment trial over corruption allegations, the second such effort to remove him in a matter of months. The opposition-dominated Congress achieved the 87-vote threshold out of 130 needed to oust the centrist leader over accusations that he accepted bribes as a governor from companies that won public works contracts.

One of the world’s oldest workshops for smelting copper – going back some 6,500 years – has been uncovered in Beersheba by archaeologists at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The remnants go back to the Chalcolithic period – the word “chalcolithic” is made up of the Greek words for “copper” and “stone” – is so named because although metalworking was already in evidence, the tools used were still made of stone. An analysis of the isotopes of ore remnants in the furnace shards show that the raw ore was brought to Neveh Noy neighborhood from Wadi...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released its final environmental impact statement on Friday which found gold and copper mining in Alaska “would not be expected to have a measurable effect on fish numbers.” That clears the final hurdle for the Corps to issue a permit this year to Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., the Canadian company that has proposed the mining operation in the state. Environmentalists oppose the project and the Obama administration did what it could to keep the Alaskan wilderness off limits to energy production. “In a scientific review conducted under the Obama administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection...

The first recorded use of copper as an infection-killing agent comes from Smith's Papyrus, the oldest-known medical document in history. The information therein has been ascribed to an Egyptian doctor circa 1700 B.C. but is based on information that dates back as far as 3200 B.C. Egyptians designated the ankh symbol, representing eternal life, to denote copper in hieroglyphs. As far back as 1,600 B.C., the Chinese used copper coins as medication to treat heart and stomach pain as well as bladder diseases. The sea-faring Phoenicians inserted shavings from their bronze swords into battle wounds to prevent infection. For thousands...

Clay pots? Wooden spoons? Copper pots? Silver forks? What materials has man used for making kitchen utensils throughout history? A new study now sheds light on the use of kitchen utensils made of copper... The research team has analyzed bones from 553 skeletons that are between 1200 and 200 years old. They all come from nine, now abandoned cemeteries in Jutland, Denmark and Northern Germany. The skeletons are today kept at Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig, Germany and at the University of Southern Denmark... It is different with the high concentrations of copper now revealed to have been ingested by our...

CHEROKEE, Iowa -- A Marcus, Iowa, man was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison for stealing copper from wind turbine sites around Marcus and burglarizing several businesses. Andrew Bock, 35, pleaded guilty in Cherokee County District Court to first-degree criminal mischief, third-degree burglary and third-offense possession of a controlled substance. Bock was charged with stealing copper and materials valued at $7,390 from nine wind turbine sites on Oct. 12 or Oct. 13. He was accused of causing $11,080 in damage to the wind turbine sites.

Chile’s protests are being viewed as a much bigger economic risk for the world’s largest copper producer than they had been when they first erupted. Chile’s government said it could no longer host a gathering of world leaders at the Nov. 16 APEC summit as well as a climate change summit in December. Chile is viewed as the economic crown jewel of Latin America, and its stock market has lost 9% since the protests began, underscoring the political risks in emerging markets.

Ancient weapons discovered on a building site will go on display at the Museum of London Docklands. The group of 453 artefacts found in Havering, east London, is the third largest ever discovered in the UK... The find, which dates from between 800BC and 900BC, was officially declared treasure by a coroner earlier this year. The discovery, dubbed the Havering Hoard, was uncovered last September, and will form the centrepiece of a major exhibition from April. Archaeologists believed the manner in which the weapons had been so carefully buried in groups close together suggested the site could have been a...

Great Orme copper found in Bronze Age artefacts "stretching from Brittany to the Baltic"North Wales was Britain's main source of copper for about 200 years during the Bronze Age, new research has found. Scientists analysed metal from the Great Orme, Conwy, and found it was made into tools and weapons, and traded across what is today's Europe. Historians once thought the Orme's copper mine - now a museum - had been a small-scale operation. Experts now believe there was a bonanza from 1600-1400 BC, with artefacts found in Sweden, France and Germany. The research, by scientists from the University...

It hasn’t been a good year to be a cop in New York City, but at 12:30 Sunday morning at the gang-plagued Edenwald Houses in the Bronx, bad became infinitely worse. ... Then onlookers loudly did their best to escalate the incident — wishing the cops on the scene dead, among other ugly things. How many cops on the beat fear ending up as a scapegoat — as did Daniel Pantaleo, fired in the Garner case — and hesitate for a fatal split-second in responding to a lethal challenge? It doesn’t help that many cops believe, quite reasonably, they’ve been...

The Edomites were portrayed as aggressors in biblical texts. but there's more to their story, according to a new study. With help from the nearby Egyptians, the Edomites developed technological prowess with a hot commodity at the time: copper. Studying ancient slag, archaeologists were able to uncover a complex geopolitical situation in the year 10,000 BCE. ========================================================================== The Edomites, an ancient kingdom derided in biblical texts as simple, have been underestimated for thousands of years, according to a new paper from a team of archaeologists. Far from simple tent-dwellers, the Edomites experienced a massive technological leap in the 10th...

When the Bronze Age hit ancient Israel, the copper-rich region was able to quickly source seven of the eight ingredients needed to produce the alloy at Timna and other mines. But where tin -- another one-eighth of the metal's recipe -- came from has been a lingering mystery for scholars. A new paper from an international team of researchers proposes a surprisingly faraway source -- Cornwall. In a paper published in June on the open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS One, the authors analyze 27 tin ingots, or blocks, from five sites bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea. For decades, researchers have...

he biblical kingdom of Edom has always been a significant puzzle for biblical archaeology. Although evidence is supplied in the Bible, the archaeological record has always had trouble interpreting the text, which said that it existed as a kingdom long before the kings of Israel. But research has uncovered the untold story of a thriving and wealthy society in the Arava Desert – in parts of Israel and Jordan – that existed during the 12th-11th centuries BCE.  Collecting slag and charcoal samples from “Slaves’ Hill”, Timna Valley, Israel. The fine layers of technological waste – well-dated by radiocarbon – provide...

Physicists have known since 1911 that electricity can flow without resistance in materials called superconductors. And in 1957, they figured out why: Under specific conditions, including typically very cold temperatures, electrons join together in pairs—something that's normally forbidden due to their mutual repulsion—and as pairs, they can flow freely. Electron pairs are named for Leon Cooper, the physicist who first described them. In addition to explaining classical superconductivity, physicists believe Cooper pairs bring about high-temperature superconductivity, an unconventional variant discovered in the 1980s. It was dubbed "high-temperature" because it occurs at temperatures that, although still very cold, are considerably higher...

The geographic origins of the metals in Scandinavian mixed-metal artifacts reveal a crucial dependency on British and continental European trading sources during the beginnings of the Nordic Bronze Age.. 2000-1700BC marks the earliest Nordic Bronze Age, when the use and availability of metal--specifically tin and copper, which when alloyed together creates bronze--increased drastically in Scandinavia... isotope and trace-element analyses on 210 Bronze Age artifact samples, predominantly axeheads, originally collected in Denmark and representing almost 50% of all known existing Danish metal objects from this period... reveal the trading networks established to import raw metals as well as crafted weapons into...

A team of marine archaeologists has uncovered a 3,600-year-old shipwreck in the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Antalya, Turkey. The ship, believed to have been a merchant vessel sailing from Cyprus, may be the oldest ever discovered, according to Haaretz... Based on its position and the large cargo of copper ingots found inside and around the wreck, it is likely to have been a trading ship, ferrying goods from Cyprus to the Aegean region. Although the ship is in very poor condition, and the hull has been almost completely destroyed, the bulk of the ship, together with its precious...

How long have humans brewed beer? Patrick McGovern, the world's foremost historian of ancient brews, hints in Ancient Brews (2017) that this activity has been around possibly at least for 11,000 years based on vessels from Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia (Turkey). How sophisticated was brewing in antiquity? Since the ancient artifact ca. 100 CE known as the "Baghdad Battery" was discovered in the 1930's, the purpose for which it was used has been a mystery. Wilhelm Koenig, a German curator of the Baghdad Museum, discovered it near Ctesiphon - the Sassanid capital and previously in the Parthian Empire around 1936...

An ancient concoction for eye infections seems to really work. The potion, which contains cattle bile, kills the "superbug" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, researchers at Britain's University of Nottingham report. In fact, it worked better than the current gold standard for MRSA infections of the flesh, the antibiotic vancomycin, an expert at Texas Tech University found. Now researchers are working to see just what's in the salve that kills germs so effectively. It started with a joint project by two wildly different departments at the University of Nottingham. Dr. Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon expert in the School of English,...

Rather than try to impose the numerous costly mandates and socialistic programs of the Green New Deal, policymakers should focus on improving U.S. industry and making the nation more mineral-independent, a move that would allow for greater technological innovation in the future, both within and outside of the energy sector.