Gary Coffman wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 07:05:25 GMT, Seppo Renfors wrote:
Tom McDonald wrote:
In the context of this thread, at least its original context,
the copper was native copper in the upper Great Lakes area of
the US and Canada. That copper is typically well over 99% pure
out of the ground, and does not have to be smelted to remove
impurities. If another context is in evidence, then a
definition of the term 'pure' is needed.
http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG
The copper may well be 99% pure - what about the rest? It isn't every
day people find huge lumps of pure copper without impurities embedded
within it. This is the dilemma that people bypass and ignore.
This has a good story about the Great lakes Copper deposits.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/copper.html
As that article notes, 14 billion pounds of copper have been removed
from the area since the ancients were working copper there. Let the
enormity of that number sink in. There was an *awful lot* of copper
there in ancient times, much of it easily accessible from the surface.
My main interest was to show the formation of the copper deposits -
the volcanic activity that melted it (and other minerals with it).
Silver is/was found in fair quantities alongside the copper. What
isn't known - because nobody cares to find out, is the composition of
the metal used in the artefacts. It is ASSUMED to be pure copper.
The knowledge of the size of excavations by the ancients suggests vast
quantities had already been mined. Only a very small fraction of it
has ever been found. The question has been posed, what happened to the
rest of it?
Note also, as Neubauer does, that they didn't want "huge lumps".
Copper is difficult to cut with primitive tools (isn't all that much fun
with modern steel chisels).
One thing we always do is under estimate the ancient people's
abilities. How the hell they ever managed to get vast stone slabs dead
level and polished to a mirror finish, is hard to comprehend, but they
did. The huge stone blocks for the pyramids, cut with copper saws. The
fine detail on gold necklaces we would need magnification to see and a
brain surgeon's steady hand and modern tools to achieve.....
Neubauer suggests that the ancients
would want to start with a piece of about the right size for the
object they wanted to make. At most that would be a lump weighing
a few pounds, in the vast majority of cases it would be a lump smaller
than a hen's egg. Even today, such lumps are relatively plentiful in
the copper belt. They were vastly more so 6,000 years ago before
modern industrial man started extracting copper from the region.
Knowing that mining was done by the ancient, including under ground
mining, then if the above was the case - where are all the piles of
copper not found to be suitable?
I don't deny lumps existed - merely that they were rare in comparison
to other copper in many forms, oxidised or thin as paper in cracks or
embedded in other rock as per the first URL. An axe head requires to
be a bit bigger than a chook egg size - more like an Emu egg size!
At village sites there should exist copper scraps in considerable
quantities if such was simply discarded as "useless" if not big enough
for the task at hand. Nobody has pointed to such as yet at least.
--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
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The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
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