Did North American natives use copper before Europeans? I know Serbia used it about 7,000 years ago but I was hoping someone could give me more information about this early metallurgy.
No, the really weird thing is they both adopted copper tooling at around the same time.At least that's what the surviving evidence and speculative dating suggest. The truth could deviate from this estimate.Basically the exact same latitude too, if I don't miss my guess.Serbia and Great Lakes, you can basically draw a straight line from here to there.The real mystery is why they stopped using copper tools.Something to do with a disruption in their cross continental riverine trade network probably.
>tfw chalcolithic occurs simultaneously in NA and EU???:\
>>18588139Sometimes regions just skip the chalcolithic altogether and just go straight from neolithic tech to bronze. And of course in the in the case of the NA Old Copper Complex they never discover alloys and just return to stone tools after the copper runs out.
>>18588258>after the copper runs outIt didn't really.I think it boils down to a demographic and cultural shift after maize agriculture was introduced from Mexico.After that point, copper was still used but only decoratively.You see similar things happen as the Neolithic advanced in Europe.Like, you have thousands of years of continual copper tool use up through the woodlands period. Like the Hopewell horizon (interaction sphere) and Adena cultures, and then it just abruptly stops.
>>18588128>you can basically draw a straight line from here to there.I know what you actually meant but that statement is in fact true of literally any two places.
>>18588348It's a very strange coincidence.
>>18588128>The real mystery is why they stopped using copper tools.>Something to do with a disruption in their cross continental riverine trade network probably.I don't have any 'intimate' knowledge on the situation, but it could have been a simple situation of economics. The readily available 'easy' surface deposits were probably eventually exhausted and the time, energy, and resource/infrastructure, necessary to gather deeper deposits of ore would have made flint & bone tools that much more appealing and easier to use.
>>18588465There are 30 meter deep mining pits dotting the Great Lakes, specifically concentrated around the Isle Royale and Keweenaw Peninsula.These represent some of the oldest metal mining operations known to mankind.They pulled an absolutely enormous amount of copper out of the ground and there is still an astronomic fuckton of it to this day.So much that estimates vary, but all of them are very high. Like, 1.5 billion pounds high. We really have no idea though.This area, IIRC, is the single largest known deposit of pure copper anywhere on earth. To this day it is still an important resource.I don't think they just "ran out". I think a complex wide spanning trade network that drove this economy was disrupted somehow.And it's not a coincidence that around this same time you start seeing substantial defensive fortifications being developed around settlements in the archaeological record.
>>18588465>flintCopper is one of the best materials to use in flint knapping.
>>18588530Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has probably the best copper deposits on earth, veins of pure copper right at the surface. The natives cold worked a lot of copper but never advanced to smelting.
>>18589017>>18589017What people still don't really grasp is that the copper boom in the 19th and 20th centuries basically erased most of the evidence for native copper mining.A *very* recurring theme in this area of study.The fact that what remains is still as substantial and impressive as it is should speak volumes about what the true scale of this activity really looked like over millenia.They were exporting fuck tons of raw copper and finished goods all over the Continent. As far south as literally Florida.A lot of people recently seem to think this habit of utilitarian copper tooling stopped long before it actually did.It, and importantly the trade lanes it propagated along, really did last up until the late woodland period when the use of bow and arrow began to really spread widely and rapidly from the south northwards.They aren't ready to reckon with the fact that a lot of the evidence is just gone now because of both intensive development and grave robbing. Happens to this very day in fact.As for smelting, I suspect you're mostly right.But many years ago when I first deep dived this topic, I did see some speculation about possible evidence of casting and/or smelting. I don't remember exactly what though, but I did post about it here if you care to crawl through the archives. Maybe I provided a source, don't remember.
