Did Bronze Age Europe get Copper from America?

[Music] there is a strangely popular theory that the copper used by bronze age europeans actually came from north america specifically from ancient copper mines in the great lakes region the theory says that this north american copper was excavated in enormous quantities for thousands of years in prehistory and that this copper was then transported across the atlantic to europe and the ancient near east this is not an academic theory but one proposed by independent researchers and amateur enthusiasts it's not that it isn't taken seriously by academics in fact it is not even acknowledged by academics because the claims it makes are based on no evidence at all for one thing no one actually knows how much copper was excavated in prehistoric michigan but considering that mining was clearly sporadic and small scale there it probably wasn't very much claims of thousands of tons and even hundreds of thousands of tons are simply made up and we do know of ancient north american copper artifacts created by local people thousands of years ago so really there is no mystery about where the american copper went it stayed in north america comments under previous videos on my channel claim that artifacts found in a bronze age shipwreck from greece were tested and found to have originated from great lakes mines and it's true that testing ancient artifacts can reveal where the metal they're made of was originally mined but the assertion that artifacts in the mediterranean have been traced to copper mined in prehistoric north america is not true a foundational element of this modern myth is that archaeologists struggle to explain the origins of the copper that was used by bronze age europe they say that no one knows where it came from the implication being that ancient european artifacts must be made from the supposedly missing copper of ancient michigan but the fact is we do know where european copper came from [Music] there are many bronze age mines in the old world that collectively produced thousands of tons of copper enough to make millions of tools weapons and decorations for europe and the near east way back in the neolithic in europe in this case between 5800 to 5600 bc people in the area of hungary and romania today were making cylindrical copper beads now they never excavated enough to make tools and weapons but clearly these neolithic europeans noticed these special oars in the ground at their feet and they knew enough about breaking hammering and heating them to make very special small objects of personal ornamentation and they could only do this because they had access to these metallic minerals in the mountains of transylvania but very early mining activity is hard to find archaeologically for much of this period and right through the bronze age mining activity could be small scale and seasonal and the ore extraction was only rarely done through tunneling copper ores were visible at the surface and they would be dug up with wood bone antler and stone tools and later copper and bronze tools would be used early european copper mines then would be open pits and sometimes trenches that followed all veins running along the surface some copper concentrations were so large that the mine workings would eventually become more like large open cast areas larger prehistoric mines like this are more detectable archaeologically but they are also likely to be obscured by millennia of erosion and filled with sediment that archaeologists need to remove to get down to the ancient workings a bigger problem for archaeology is that ancient or extraction has often been damaged or completely obliterated by more recent mining practices perhaps from the medieval era or by industrial extraction through dynamites and machines on the greek island of seraphos there is evidence of smelting dating from the early bronze age in the form of slag heaps and furnaces the island is relatively rich in metal resources particularly iron which has been extensively mined in modern times and it's possible this later or extraction has destroyed the early bronze age mining activity on the island while the more remote smelting sites survived but some places were so rich in copper that they became long-lasting mining production centers an excellent example is the island of cyprus during the bronze age cyprus was a major copper producer and exporter so much so that the name of the island itself might come from the word the local people there used for copper and it continued to extract and export so much for so long that the romans called the substance aes kipriyam meaning the metal of cyprus which became the latin word cuprum and ultimately the english word copper and the ancient mines and metal processing sites on cyprus have been extensively studied in fact practically every ancient settlement on cyprus has evidence of metal extraction and processing activity once processed the copper was commonly converted into what are called oxide ingots for export the shape of the ingots is said to resemble a stretched out animal hide it's believed this shape was developed so that they could be lashed into place with ropes for transport on land this would be on the backs of wagons and donkeys but mostly these ingots were transported by boat across the mediterranean and through the long rivers of europe and the near east we know the scale of production not only by the extent of the ancient mine workings but also by the size of the shipments that were being sent for example we have the uluburun shipwreck sinking off the southern coast of anatolia in around 1300 bc it was likely a canaanite ship sailing westwards with its cargo towards mycenaean greece it carried 10 tons of cypriot copper in 354 oxide ingots and a ton of tin which together would have made 11 tonnes of bronze and we know the copper came from cyprus because of a provenancing method called lead isotope analysis they take samples of the ingots and measure three lead isotope ratios of the traces of lead that occur naturally in the copper and the data is compared to samples taken from various ore deposits because each mine location has its own specific chemical fingerprint that can be matched to the artifacts archaeologists can use this technique not just on copper and other metals with lead traces but on other artifacts where minerals containing lead were used in their manufacture like glazes glass and paint another provenancing method used by archaeologists is the analysis of the overall composition of the metals in the artifacts carefully measuring the trace elements present and comparing the results with specific sites the unique geology of mineral-bearing oars around the world is detectable in the metals smelted from them using multiple provenancing methods together along with other archaeological techniques can greatly improve the accuracy of results evidence for the scale of the mining here also comes from the eight letters from alashia a bronze age kingdom on cyprus found in the archives of amana in egypt dating to the mid-14th century bc these tablets say that 897 ingots of copper which is between 24 to 27 tons have been sent to egypt and that's just the exports from one kingdom on cyprus sent to egypt over a period of 30 years or less egypt would have imported copper from other places and likewise cyprus exported to other lands during this brief era so there's no doubt that enormous amounts of copper were extracted from the island oxide ingots from cyprus have also been found as far east as a mesopotamian city near modern baghdad as far west as marseille as far north as germany and as far south as the nile delta we know for certain that the mines of cyprus were a major source of the copper used in bronze age europe and the near east there is also written evidence of copper and bronze use in bronze age greece in the form of linear b tablets from the mycelium palace archives which record the receipt or distribution of volumes of commodities the fragments from the palace of pelos alone dating from between about 1400 to 1200 bc mention amounts of copper adding up to about a thousand kilos the mycenaeans imported cypriot copper but there was also copper mining on the mainland and on the islands of the aegean right back to the early bronze age some of the cycladic islands like kythnos and seraphos provided copper to the cycladic civilization that thrived from before 3000 bc until they were absorbed by the minoan civilization from crete around 2000 bc 5000 years ago these aegean islands were mined and the oars processed on steep hills overlooking the sea so that prevailing winds rising up the slopes would help to blast air into the furnaces that they constructed for smelting metal processing started very early on the island of crete too there is evidence of copper working activity as far back as what they call the final neolithic period there between 4 500 and 3500 bc but methyl working and copper mining in southeastern europe has an even more ancient origin in the balkans and carpathians [Music] as mentioned earlier the first phase of copper working here began before 5000 bc and balkan smiths from about 4 800 to 4600 bc began making molds able to withstand the heat of molten copper and began casting copper tools and weapons these were used and exchanged across southeastern europe by about 4 600 to 4500 bc during this era prospecting for new all sources mining and long distance trade for raw copper and finished products initiated an era of interconnectivity that extended down to the aegean and east across the steppe to the vulgar kilns and smelters for pottery and copper consumed the forests and pollen cores taken in romania near ancient settlements show significant reductions in local forest cover at this time but why did metal working develop so early and so extensively in the balkans well it was a fertile area with large populations who could afford specialist craftsmen working initially in pottery and then in metalwork however it was only possible due to the presence of copper-bearing oars in the southern balkans it was their exploitation that fueled this boom in european metalworking but after around 4000 bc these balkan civilizations declined and copper mines here ceased production copper mining then expanded further north and west into the carpathians and the hungarian plain and on into central europe we know this is the case because artifacts across the region from this era have been tested and found to match the signatures from these carpathian and pannonian mines but mining was not limited to mountainous regions across the european steps to the east copper ores in the form of azurite and malachite appear along with iron-bearing sandstones between the central north caucasus region and the ural mountains these oars were exposed by water erosion on the sides of many stream valleys and tributaries of the vulgar and were mined by people from the yamnaya culture again we know this for certain because organic material in mining pits have been dated to this era and copper artifacts like axes daggers and pins from yamnia graves have been chemically matched to local oars incidentally these step miners and metalworkers were also amongst the first in the world to experiment with forging iron a catacomb period grave from around 2500 bc well over a thousand years before the iron age contained a knife with a handle made of arsenic or bronze and a blade made of iron not meteoric iron like some found in ancient egypt but forged of iron smelted from ore long before iron began to be used in hittite anatolia or the near east copper mining on the step continued and expanded throughout the bronze age providing not only the metal these people needed for their own tools and weapons but also providing valuable exports to the civilizations in the ancient near east [Music] however looking at the rest of europe war deposits are concentrated in mountainous regions typically far from the fertile lowlands where most of the people lived these copper production centers include mines in ireland wales england spain france switzerland austria italy slovakia bulgaria romania and greece several of these large copper mining areas were able at different times to establish dominant positions in the metal supply of various regions for example powerful chieftains in central europe after around 2000 bc mined processed and exported copper from the mountainous regions they controlled the rulers of the unitica culture mined the oar mountains along what is today the czech german border and the slovakian carpathians their wealth in metals made them an essential part of a trade network linking them with the atlantic coasts of britain and baltic scandinavia the eastern alps ii were a major copper production center with a large cluster of bronze age mines they produced distinctive small rib ingots and ring ingots which are found in deposits across central europe over 2 000 of these rib ingots have been examined by archaeologists and they weigh between 90 and 120 grams they were likely made in these forms for ease of transport before being melted down for conversion into weapons and tools from a first glance you might imagine the ring ingots were worn for personal decoration but that's likely not the case their rough surfaces are generally unfinished pitted and still showing casting seams but they might also have served as a medium of exchange to facilitate trade and were perhaps an easy way for powerful chiefs to accumulate wealth the especially productive mitterberg mines in the austrian alps produced an estimated 20 000 metric tons of copper over a period of about a thousand years between 1700 and 700 bc that's enough copper to produce around 200 million rib ingots [Music] by the middle bronze age in europe copper and the copper tin ally we call bronze was not a rare substance in southern scandinavia alone in the period between 1500 to 1100 bc it is estimated that between 10 000 to 20 000 swords were interred buried in the earth with their deceased owners in their burial mounds and of course those swords would need to be continually replaced by the sons of the bronze age warriors of denmark over the same period in the same region the approximately 22 thousand farmsteads there would have had an average of at least two bronze axes and two bronze sickles for working the farm and by the way this is a very conservative estimate bronze age farmsteads with better preservation in britain and switzerland have far more tools and weapons at the most farm site in britain from around a thousand bc every house had a bronze assemblage that included seven axes two spears two sickles two chisels or gouges and a razor by the late bronze age so much was being mined that the metal had become an everyday substance it was valuable of course and incredibly useful you would have taken great care of your tools just as we do now but it was not rare scandinavia had no copper mines in the bronze age and so they imported everything they needed from various other places many studies have been carried out to discover exactly where the people of the nordic bronze age got their mettle over the centuries artifacts have been tested and the copper found to originate from specific mines in central europe the italian alps iberia britain and ireland and possibly also from sardinia and cyprus different sources had primacy in different eras as production at specific european mines rose and fell and the chiefs controlling them grew and declined in power [Music] copper mining in britain and ireland took off between 2400 and 2200 bc and metallurgy here was boosted by the presence of tin mines in southwest britain this meant that the transition between arsenical copper and tin bronze took place earlier here than much of the rest of europe where there were no tin mines the chiefs of south west britain from what's called the wessex culture grew wealthy and powerful in part from their control of the tin mines and the trade in and out of britain after the enormously productive great all mine in north wales started to become exhausted in around 1300 bc britain began importing most of its copper from various mines in europe most of all perhaps from mines in the eastern alps right through to the end of the bronze age and beyond the copper mines of europe produced thousands of tons of copper that made millions of ornaments tools and weapons to quote from a recent paper on the subject the production movement and consumption of copper-based metals in the european bronze age represents by far the most intensively archaeologically geologically and archaeometallurgically investigated period and region in world archaeology end quote we know very well where the copper for bronze age europe came from and it was not north america if you enjoy my videos please support this channel on patreon to ensure i can keep making them in future if you can spare three dollars a month to support this work please follow the link in the video description now please watch this video focusing on one specific copper mine on the great orm in north wales that helped transform bronze age britain thank you for watching

Channel: Dan Davis History

Views: 166,231

Keywords: bronze age history, history of europe, history documentaries, ancient history documentary, ancient civilizations, bronze age, ancient history, Bronze Age copper mining, Prehistoric mining, bronze age mining, European bronze age, Prehistoric mines, Isle Royale copper, michigan copper mines, michigan copper mines mystery, michigan copper in the mediterranean, keweenaw peninsula mines, keweenaw copper

Id: FL92iskCSZA

Length: 19min 43sec (1183 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2022