...for over two millennia, the great civilizations of the Mediterranean... possessed copper in abundance. They had gold, timber, and grain... What they did not have was tin... in the early centuries, tin came from... Central and South Asia, from the Zeravshan Valley in what is now Tajikistan and the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan... By the Late Bronze Age, the kingdoms had turned to the sea... In 1982, a sponge diver off the coast of Grand Cape in Turke... found what came to be known as the Uluburun shipwreck... mostly, it carried metal. There were ten tons of copper, in the...