Tom McDonald wrote:
Seppo Renfors wrote:
Tom McDonald wrote:
Seppo Renfors wrote:
snip
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
[..]
Seppo,
Thank you for the urls.
From the second link:
Hang on a sec. What about the first? After all it is THE more
important one.
Seppo,
I don't think so. That's why I focused on the other url.
THAT or similar and worse are the condition of the copper you will
find frequently.
http://www.dayooper.com/Networks.JPG
You tell me how the hell you can make an axe head out of that! You are
in total denial about this problem.
I don't know the matrix enclosing the copper in this sample.
It is enough to know it exists.
However, as you note below, stone hammers would work fine to
crush rock containing the copper. Then the copper bits could be
picked out of the debitage.
....and how do you think it is made into one large lump -eg to make an
axe head? Spit on it an hope it glues it together?
What is the problem? No one has maintained that all the copper
used was in the form of pure copper nuggets.
Oh but that IS the implication.
"Michigan’s copper deposits were remarkable for their quality
and purity. Bands of native copper were contained in outcrops 2
to 8 miles wide and of varying depth. The surface deposits first
attracted the notice of Native Americans who dug out the easily
accessible chunks and fashioned copper tools and adornments from
them."
Do you REALLY believe they were cliffs of PURE copper?
No, of course not. Don't be silly.
Note the words
"were contained in". Then see the Networks.JPG and you will get an
idea of the meaning of the words.
What is your point? We know that the folks back then
eventually had to mine the copper. We know the tools they used
to do so. Had most of the copper been in large lumps, the tools
used for mining would not have been large stone hammers, wedges,
fire, etc.
As Gary has pointed out, it's a bitch to cut pure copper, even
with steel tools. Smart folks, like the Indians of those days
were (still are, BTW), would most likely have preferred to
extract the copper in more manageable sizes.
So mining involves exactly the type finds (and worse) I pointed to
with the URL.
I am aware of one piece of copper 17 ton of it (Yank ton presumably -
a short measure). It was found on the bottom of Lake Superior. I'm
also aware of another large find of several tons, but a VERY long way
underground in a modern mine. Neither kind of find was available to
the native people.
And nor would they have preferred them if they were available.
There is a huge chunk of copper still in a mine, which the
ancient Indians tried to extract, but appear to have given up as
a bad job. Still, they seemed to do OK without it.
BTW, what is your fascination with size here? It's not really
relevant.
Isn't it? Why else do claims of "more manageable sizes" get made? Also
mentions of "egg sized" etc... etc... indicating a contiguous piece of
pure copper of the required size. This right size lump message has run
right through the thread by the naysayers.
So mining appears to have *begun* where copper deposits were on
the surface. This makes sense, as there was also drift copper
(over a wider area than just the UP mining areas), and folks
early on seem to have selectively used lumps of copper that
needed no processing. While this might not have been an every
day event, it clearly was common enough to produce many of the
copper artifacts in the region.
As to mining the copper:
"They [Indians] dug pits in the ground and separated the copper
from the stone by hammering, by the use of wedges, and,
possibly, by the use of heat. Thousands of hammers have been
found in and about the old pits."
The claimed method is not fact - only assumption. The "fact" is the
finding a lot of "hammers". They are only proof of pounding or
hammering - which can mean crushing of rock containing the copper.
Yes, that too. Or do you imagine that the hammers were
single-purpose tools?
Indeed they are. A hammer is properly described as a "hand percussion
instrument" - a single purpose tool.
It seems that these folks picked the visible copper out of the
debitage after beating the bejesus out of the rock. That seems
reasonable to me, as there seems to have been quite enough such
copper available to make other methods of extraction unnecessary.
The dilemma you refer to does not seem to exist.
THAT is nonsense. I have provided you with a good example of the
nature of it. It isn't the first time I have done it either - and
haven't even had to use the same pictures.
Re-read (read?) what I wrote directly above the bit you went
off on.
"The dilemma you refer to does not seem to exist." - does exist - I
have provided evidence of it in the URL above.
Indian people
developed the technology they needed to extract the resource
they wanted.
Obviously, only you don't know what method they used. Nobody has
bothered to find out.
Ever heard of 'archaeology'? Or haven't *you* bothered to find
that out?
You are rejecting some methods, and still only recognise your own
unsubstantiated version that suits your view. You do not accept
crushing and melting to separate the copper from rubbish - to make it
into "more manageable sizes"!
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/crucible.htm
"Neiburger says these bubbles are caused by hot gas in molten metal
and as such are solid evidence of copper melting and casting."
....not to mention other claims made on that site.
They may have developed copper casting technology
as well. Since smelting wasn't necessary, casting would have
been a stand-alone technology. It wasn't beyond the capacity of
the Indians of the upper Great Lakes; but it also wasn't necessary.
Then you can perhaps point to the huge piles of discarded copper that
was useless because it looked like that stuff in the first URL. There
have been vast amounts mined by the native people - where are the
rejected copper piles?
Some is still there.
Where?
I assume, but do not know, that modern
prospectors and miners would have processed such piles, as they
would probably have been a good source of copper for smelting.
Or do you think that respect for the past would have prevented
the modern copper industry from utilizing that resource?
I did anticipate this answer already :-)
Where is the evidence they did so? Remember "not knowing" means
"doesn't exist", in your methodology of argument. The ancient mining
sites are numerous - therefor scrap copper sites would be at least as
numerous - but more likely far more numerous as village sites don't
have them either. Therefor the recording of the use of these piles of
"copper rubbish" by early colonials is that much more likely to exist
in multiple places - IF it happened at all. Now all you have to do is
support your "what if" with facts or see it disappear - without even
so much as a puff of smoke.
"No large pieces of scrap copper were found, and this could be an
indication that the Cahokia copper craftsmen "had learned to smelt
copper scrap"." - ibid
"Perino noted that while it is known that many copper objects were
made at Cahokia, "nowhere in the area has anyone found any copper
scrap"." - ibid
A broader look for copper s/melting.
http://www.shef.ac.uk/assem/2/2dung2.html
(Review of book)
Early Metal Mining and Production - Edinburgh University Press 1995
ISBN 0 7486 0498 7
"The use of native copper in North America is explored in some detail
but the smelting and alloying technology of South America is barely
mentioned."
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/lamanai.htm
"Copper and bronze (copper-tin and copper-arsenic) began to arrive at
Lamanai during the 13th century AD. Provenience studies conducted by
Dr. Dorothy Hosler at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
revealed that the copper used to produce many of these items was
obtained from West Mexican ore fields."
Note specially this:
http://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/P6030052.JPG
Where is the "obvious" evidence of it being cast?
There is a section on metals (pp.183-350) in the volume edited by
David A. Scott and Pieter Meyers, "Archaeometry of Pre-Columbian Sites
and Artifacts". What is says I have no idea
See this for an idea - not yet implemented?
http://www.socarchsci.org/ARK96.htm
LASER ION MASS SPECTROSCOPY AS A TOOL FOR ARCHAEOMETRY
If the copper is pure is not known because nobody has bothered to find
out.
And yet, they did. If you aren't going to read this thread any
better than you appear to have done in this sentence, why post?
Are you now claiming an extensive analysis of artefact has indeed been
done? I'm sure you would be eager to point to them -if they exist. So
where are they? As far as I know, only those few artefacts under
discussion have been analysed to any degree.
Silver does exist with/alongside/embedded in with copper in that
area - as are other minerals, including arsenic.
Sure. Copper artifacts have been found with just those
inclusions. However, silver isn't found in them as an alloy
(which might happen if the material were cast), but as
inclusions (which would happen if the copper-silver cobble were
worked by smithing).
How do you know that when the analysis hasn't been done?
--
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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