Native Americans near Eagle Lake in Wisconsin were some of the earliest metal workers in the world, what is known as the Old Copper Culture. We have copper artifacts from them that are at least 8500 years old.
We have arrowheads, knives, axes, etc, but metal working just… Died out.
The leading theory?
The copper was too pure. Various impurities are what give copper strength, it’s quite malleable as a pure metal.
They were doing all this work to make tools not significantly better than flint, so when the easiest sources dried up they just stopped bothering.
The earliest bronze examples are actually made from a copper ore that included arsenic or tin already, and natural ores that include enough of either are quite rare, and they just weren’t available to the Old Copper Culture, and without that initial accident of geology they had no way of knowing that adding specific impurities would make the metal stronger, or even a tin mine for it to happen through experimentation.
TL;DR don’t be too mean to Ea-Nasir, guy’s copper might have just been too pure. Like you’ve never seen a customer ask for a different product than they actually wanted!
Geological activity gouged some crazy deep holes and dumped everything on top. Basically the entire upper peninsula was scooped out of lake Superior, flipped over and dumped on the ground, which is why there’s a bunch of metal everywhere up there.
Also some of the oldest exposed stone on the planet. Nothing too useful about it beyond “my, that’s a very old stone”, but it’s a vaguely fun fact.
It’s a real reference.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nāṣir
“Inscribed on it is a complaint to Ea-nāṣir about a copper delivery of the incorrect grade and issues with another delivery”
It worked perfectly 3,774 years later and people still don’t want to buy copper from this guy.
Fun Fact:
Native Americans near Eagle Lake in Wisconsin were some of the earliest metal workers in the world, what is known as the Old Copper Culture. We have copper artifacts from them that are at least 8500 years old.
We have arrowheads, knives, axes, etc, but metal working just… Died out.
The leading theory?
The copper was too pure. Various impurities are what give copper strength, it’s quite malleable as a pure metal.
They were doing all this work to make tools not significantly better than flint, so when the easiest sources dried up they just stopped bothering.
The earliest bronze examples are actually made from a copper ore that included arsenic or tin already, and natural ores that include enough of either are quite rare, and they just weren’t available to the Old Copper Culture, and without that initial accident of geology they had no way of knowing that adding specific impurities would make the metal stronger, or even a tin mine for it to happen through experimentation.
TL;DR don’t be too mean to Ea-Nasir, guy’s copper might have just been too pure. Like you’ve never seen a customer ask for a different product than they actually wanted!
I was just reading about how Michigan had a volcano which deposited large amounts of nearly pure copper, and even some naturally alloyed bronze.
Geological activity gouged some crazy deep holes and dumped everything on top. Basically the entire upper peninsula was scooped out of lake Superior, flipped over and dumped on the ground, which is why there’s a bunch of metal everywhere up there.
Also some of the oldest exposed stone on the planet. Nothing too useful about it beyond “my, that’s a very old stone”, but it’s a vaguely fun fact.
That reminds me, I definitely need to track down some Mohawkite jewelry.
Sure, it’s technically toxic, but fashion always comes at a price.
I like my ingots pure. I can mix in the alloys myself!