your explanation of Annealing is a bit off. the way you explained it sounds like forging, which is not a good way to work copper, it will crumble if worked at those temperatures. the reason you anneal copper is that it "work hardens" i.e. its crystal structure trends towards hardness as its worked. annealing rearranges this to soften the metal and allow it to be further worked. the process of annealing involves heating the metal to its annealing temperature and then allowing it to slowly cool back down. once cooled it can then be worked for a time until it becomes harder and you risk cracking and crumbling it, when you anneal it again.
@@AncientAmericas in addition, the reason for this is that if left to cool on its own, the copper will crystalize into large crystals, which cleave apart from one another when hammered. Quenching the metal causes it to solidify with a minuscule crystal grain. To visualize this imagine forming a bowl out of clay. the clay is malleable because the aggregate is microscopic. now imagine trying to form a bowl out of gravel. the grains are way too big to be ductile or malleable and it just falls apart.
@@casey9439 I often learn more from reading comments than is presented in even good, solid informative videos. Your comment illuminated not only this video, but clarified other observations and contradictions I'd noted elsewhere. Thank you.
@@paulus.tarsensus Thanks. As I see it, we're all just half-informed oafs trying to become informed oafs. Sometimes one of us has a little inkling to share and sometimes another one of us has a different inkling to share
As a master-metalsmith who has worked native copper with paleo tech and a dilatant stone knapper with lots of points to my credit I promise that stone tools are much sharper than copper can be made to be. Stone blades are also much better at keeping that edge. Copper is only really superior for it's plastic distortion capacity (the awls and needles for example).
(Laugh!) Most people don't know or realize that obsidian breaks at the molecular level rather than wears down at the microscopic - thus can make far sharper blades. Knapped obsidian was used as the instrument of choice for surgeons (especially eye surgeons) until lasers came along, because they were so much more sharper than metal blades and left far less scarring. I'd bet you know that already, though! (My area of expertise is ancient technology and diet, with specific research in chert!) Talking about stone tool technology - heat treating. Many forms of chert become even more workable and usable if they've been heat-treated before knapping. The heat treating process required a deep understanding and knowledge of the material - almost equal to an engineer's knowledge! I've seen points where the control was so exact that the blade itself was still grey, but the very edge had changed color to red! My ancestors knew enough about it that they were able to successfully heat treat chert - going back to the paleoindian period!
@@RedHeart64 The Clovis era people who faced sabre cats at a range of ten feet or less would have been served best by points of obsidian drawn from a lambs wool transporting sheath. They would have left the copper jewelry in the cabin.
@@williamanderson4395 Obsidian, possibly. It was a valued trade item and people would have traveled far to get it because of it's usefulness and characteristics. We've found Clovis (and PRE-Clovis) points and tools, and they used the best materials available in their area. They've made them of chert on much of this continent. There are also points and tools of heat-treated chert that have been found - and heat-treating chert requires a really deep understanding of the material (it does make it easier to work and more glassy, if done right). Other materials have been used as well. We found one point (and maybe more) that had been heat treated so that the very edge would have changed color (happens with Florida chert and maybe elsewhere) to red, while the rest of the blade remained 'natural' (some shade of gray, maybe mottled). That took a master's understanding of chert - very precise control of temperature and duration to achieve! Lamb's wool? Not likely... I'm not aware of any domesticated sheep before Columbus. Possibly wool from one of the wild sheep species. There are many other materials that would probably have been used, but also I'd point out that it would have been much more likely they'd have had a spear on hand and used that. Copper working... Most of the copper working I've read about occurred during the Archaic period and later. (Meteoric Iron also was worked and used to a much smaller degree.) I don't remember anything found in an earlier context, but it's been a while since I've done any reading on copper working/copper artifacts.
Yep... The stone tools of these N. American cultures weren't "primitive". It would take relatively advanced metallurgy to make something generally better. So not much reason for them to faff around with metalworking making inferior stuff. But that means they never figured out the tricks for making metal implements which could surpassed the advanced stone stuff they already had.
The general public thinking that the First Nations were stone age peoples with no metal working technology aside from a little gold and silver in Central America isn't a stereotype, it's a deficiency in education. I had pretty significant schooling in pre-columbian North Americans in my youth and none of the text books or other books mention copper working around the great lakes. It wasn't until a few years ago when I started living near a reserve on the north shore and talking to people there that I'd heard word one about copper tools being made and used before European contact. Thanks so much for the video, I hope it gets shared a ton.
The people who develop these metalworking Traditions were not the Indians are Native Americans that Europeans happened upon in the Fifteenth Century, but a completely different group of people that has long since disappeared
We call people " stone age" because there was no tradition of smelting . There are some cultural aspects used to define copper age that native people did not develope , possibly because of no need . The mines were known by Europeans but people did not want to think natives were doing it so came up with theories of ancient phonea
The bell of Garuda is a copper hand bell someone discovered in a chunk of coal...I thought it was crazy it would be 3 million years old until I did some research on Garuda and found out he's the architect of "Angkor Wat" which just so happens to be millions of years old also...Wonder why my history teacher never spoke of this or Mansa Musa...
@@Laotzu.Goldbug No, that is not true. There is complete continuity between these cultures, fully documented archaeologically. Nobody "disappeared". The First Nations that inhabit the Great Lakes area today are both cultural and biological descendants of those who first mined the copper, and continued to do so into historical times. They changed culturally over time ---- just as every society does ---- but we are not talking about any "completely different group". No legitimate archaeologist or historian will tell you any such nonsense. It is promoted only by crackpots.
When I was in high school in the 1960s we had a neighbor who collected minerals and artifacts. I took him to a site I knew where I had found several arrowheads and later he showed me his collection of copper jewelry made by local Senecas. He told me that the copper came from Wisconsin and was part of the Seneca trade network that stretched south down the Mississippi, east to Long Island and west to Wisconsin. When he died in 1980 his entire collection went to a museum in Buffalo. From him I developed an interest in history and archaeology that I am sorry I did not pursue by going to college because I couldn't afford it.
Do you live up north? I loved walking around the Keweenaw, especially so after we bought a house years ago. There were old mines almost in our back yard! I so miss being up there now but illness prevents this now.
If that's true you need to contact an archaeologist, because that's potentially a revolutionary discovery. Copper trade is something that happened thousands of years ago. If there's evidence that it continued to modern days, that's like discovering that people still spoken Sumerian 200 years ago.
@@Ezullof People from a museum in Buffalo have already documented Trade between the Senecas and their neighbors as far west as Wisconsin and south down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Archaeologists have uncovered sites along lake Ontario that show the Senecas moved around a lot more then previously thought.
This area could be the cradle of civilization, however nobody would ever know because there's nearly no archeological activity here and everyone believes there is no history worth knowing. Native history in the Americas holds so many untold secrets. I think this was a really good look at the facts around a long untold story.
You wanna talk about an unknown cradle of civilization, I'd make a case for the Mississippi/Ohio basin. That's the crucible of Hopewell and Mississippian civilization.
@@AncientAmericas so much to discover. By the way did you hear these conspiracy rumors about NASA doing archeological digs in New Mexico? Some kind of native American site but it has very advanced layout. I watched your other video about an anomalous native mound and it seems maybe this NASA dig could be similar in its uniqueness. I saw photos of the dig now whether what they claimed to be was accurate or not is debatable. The source didn't seem credible to me anyway. But if it was credible maybe you could do a video about it? NASA usually flies rockets so why are they digging about? That's some click bait for sure. Also even if it's not true a video debunking it would still get views. I just found your channel today by the way. Keep up the great work cheers
@@JonnoPlays funny I know a guy who says he found anchiet Chinese shipwrecks with gold as a child where a military base now is, even showed me Google Earth images. Think he still has the FBI on speed dial to bitch at them. Honesty I think I believe him.
“White people” were here first, or atleast our ancient ancestors. Look up pictures of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, they were seafarers, and have distinctly “Western” features.
I live in Simcoe County, Ontario (between Georgian Bay of Lake Huron and Lake Simcoe).There’s a really cool collection of books and maps by a guy called Andrew Hunter, called ‘Huron Village Sites of Simcoe County’ (1895-1906). He literally rode around on a bicycle and documented all of the Wendat and Algonquian sites he could find (over 400) and a ton of them have copper artifacts and other items like conch shells and glass beads. He also noted some brass artifacts as well, but that may have been during the French occupation of the area. Great video 👍
super interesting! The Ojibwe also traded with cowrie shells (of which there are none in the Great Lakes region. There are also pueblo sites where dead macaws from South America were found. The amount of trade going on was HUGE.
@@casey9439 Copper from Lake Superior was traded widely across North America. Shells from the Gulf Coast went the other way. High quality stone for tool making was also traded widely.
It's not just in the great lakes region, I'm from southeast Missouri and there is an ancient copper mine behind my dad's house, still has some native drawings on it so a few years ago some scientists from Washington university came to take pics and put them through different filters to pull off images that you can't see with your naked eye and from what they said it was a "shrine" to the underwater panther god
That's super cool! It sounds like thats a Mississippian site if it's to underwater panther god. Do you have the name of that site? I'd love to check it out.
@@AncientAmericas there is no name for it other than what we call it "the Indian bluffs" and the scientist person from Washington university said that they usually don't give locations because all of the art is done on sandstone so when the many meth heads around here try and cut them out and sell them they are usually just destroyed, I honestly don't think they have wrote a thing about it and they definitely haven't dug there ever so I'm not sure what u could find out but it's on the little St Francis river
@@AncientAmericas the scientist guy said it was most likely Mississippian as well but the problem I have is that I've only ever found arrowheads from the archaic to late archaic period, nothing as refined as u see in Cahokia or surrounding areas
@@missourimongoose7643 that doesn't mean it's not Mississippian. Archaic and Woodland people tended to use similar spots on the landscape, so their stuff is likely to show up, and sacred sites tend to have less left behind, so it's not all that surprising that there aren't LW/MT points out there. I WOULD expect shell tempered pottery though.
Who knows. The Mississippians-- the first of which were Caddoan-- weren't the only ones who believed in that thing. So did Algonquians & some Siouans & Iroquoians, albeit sometimes under different names like "Blue Panther," "Snake," "Comet Lion" or "True Lynx" & over time they evolved from a wildcat spirit into something more like a dragon for a lot of cultures. Some of the last Siouan tribes who lived in Missouri before whites were on that list. Still, if the archaeologists who looked it over assumed Mississippian, then they must have more reason for saying as much. My Saponi ancestors also had a copper mine in the Blue Ridge Mountains that was noted by early Jamestown explorers & there was apparently a silver mine down towards the Cherokee somewhere. By the way, what were they using the Galena for? This is the first time I'm hearing about this.
The Inuit worked iron from a meteor in Greenland starting at about the same time. The Cape York meteorite is the source of this iron, it came to earth thousands or perhaps 10,000+ years ago.
@@earthknight60 yes, meteoric iron was highly regarded in several different cultures. It was often regarded as magical not only because it came from the heavens, but later on as steel-making spread, sometimes because it really did make demonstrably better steel. In some cases it's been found that the reason it was better than terrestrial iron was that mostly-iron meteorites also had small amounts of alloying elements like vanadium or chromium - which weren't discovered and used on purpose in steel-making until about a century ago.
@@dogslobbergardens6606 There's a lot of evidence iron working is almost as old as copper working. Meteoric iron anyway. There are some really old iron artifacts around if you look for them. King tut had two iron daggers in his tomb, despite egypt being in the bronze age at the time.
Meteoric iron is special stuff. It's actually an alloy akin to stainless steel, if you can believe that. The nickel content makes it easier to cold-work and resist rust as well.
Metallurgy - "the branch of science and technology concerned with the properties of metals and their production." The original comment did not misuse the term. Stop being keyboard warriors in the comments. I thought it was a good comment since most people would agree they had no idea there was as much copper working in this particular area.
The chief gain for copper weapon tips is that they don't break. Making a copper tool a sharp as good chert point is, in fact, impossible. That means the use-life of a copper weapon tip is the length of time between manufacture and loss rather than failure. The OC is a long-term interest of mine, but as an archaeologist in California, not a topic I could spend a lot of time on. Thanks for this.
Many stone projectile points are found snapped off at their bases. This is not a design flaw, but rather a desired factor. It takes more time and effort to make a good arrow or dart shaft than it does the point. Once shot into the game, the point breaks off and the animal's muscles pull the point deeper into the tissue as the wounded animal runs. The shaft than can be recovered and to animal tracked to its dispatch. This is particularly true in arid regions where appropriate, straight wood is rare. It's easy to flake and haft a new point.
@@dat2ra You're correct about making the shafts being costly, but the archaeological evidence indicates that the points were not wasted. A multipart projectile shaft works bette, than points that break. The point and foreshaft are often expected to come free of the main shaft, which can fall free. One remarkable find in Nevada was a pouch full of Elko - IIRC- points already mounted to fores hafts. A hunter could carry such a pouch along with two to four larger dart shafts and repeatedly re-tip the shafts during a day's hunting. One common misreading of archaeological projectile points is an inability to observe whether they are reworked or not. Many, possibly a majority, are re-tipped or modified on the distal edges to remove impact damage. The archaeological recovery of bases is very likely due to shaft recovery and rearming, as you note.
Anybody from whom would consider a trip to the copper country of Michigan, I suggest doing it. The region not only has a copper history, but for mineral collectors there are many interesting rocks. For those less interested in native American history & more interested in industrial history the entire region is the Detroit of the 1920s. It was the best in the world & over night everybody left & didn't take there stuff with them.
Like industrial metals in the ground and water,flint doesn't have a sharp edge.,but education for poor youth about growing and eating healthy vegetables,in some places effected by industrial hazards,offsets some toxic effects left behind in the ground
Grew up in Fond du Lac Country for most of my childhood, and we used to find copper fish hooks, stone arrowheads and other things that we would photograph and mark and report to the Historical Society. Growing up on the “41 Corridor” you saw a lot of missed and heavily under documented artifacts and sites. You’d have a friend who’s grandpa had a farm with a burial mound on it that you’d walk and find countless things on - just kicked around like it was nothing. I wish more people valued artifacts like I and my family did.
I'm blessed to have a farm I can hunt on the east shore of rush lake and the area is rich in native american culture. I found a copper knife the other day metal detecting in the woods. I'm stoked to explore more.....
Alaskan natives also used metallic copper from the Copper River/Wrangell Mtns to make tools and trade goods. The University of Alaska Fairbanks has a fantastic copper nugget in their museum that weighs over 5,000 lbs. Prospectors found a nugget weighing over 3 tons.
I am a man of Mesoamerican extraction. The Maya area to be precise. One of the things that is seldom told because of all the excitement surrounding gold is it the native people of that region valued copper more than they valued gold and silver. Gold and silver were something for the gods. Copper could be used in every day life. That and obsidian were exceedingly valuable raw materials. So, this vid delights me but, it does not surprise me.
It's the same in most ancient cultures. The native hawaiians prized iron over gold and I've heard that the ancient mesopotamian were the same. People arent idiotd and prefer practical tools to shiny soft baubles
Wise. The Late Western Romans and Dark Age Europeans stopped using gold as money. Currency must be stable to work. Gold mining took incredible deep-mine engineering...and barbarian disruptions made production erratic (to say the least.) Gold became decorative - used in churches, on books as gold leaf, and even on clothing. Silver became the currency. (It's common and easy to work with.) During Viking times, when iron mining was disrupted...iron was more valuable than silver. There was no such thing as throwing away broken iron tools. Its literal, that plows became swords, and vice versa. Silver was nice - but you needed iron to defend it.
Subbed. What an age we live in, where single people or small teams can produce content that's more informative and interesting than many professionally produced documentaries.
I live in the area of pure copper, I have raw worked copper, I have found arrowheads, Copper Culture State Park in Oconto WI is right down the road from me. After Copperfest in early June, on Saturday, generally many of the collectors of Indian artifacts from the area, meet at the Copper Culture park, set up tables and show their collections to the public. I don’t know how the pandemic might mess this up…but it might return this June.
Archeologists say that most of the copper tools that were actually used were found in Wisconsin and in two layers. The first layer was buried under a lot of soil that didn't show any evidence of human habitation until the top layer where they found mainly copper fish hooks and awls along with broken flint arrow heads. They figured a mega-drought had set in which put the copper trade out of business since the tribes abandoned the area for a very long time and beaten copper objects stopped appearing in the upper levels of the burial mounds. Once those with the skills returned, then they only made the items that the regional tribes were willing to trade for.
This one made me miss Michigan. I remember as a kid picking up rocks (clay?) containing small chunks of copper in the Keweenaw Peninsula. There was so much of it, just on the surface. In later years, taking my own kids up there, finding copper didn't seem so easy. Thanks for such a detailed look!
My friends and I used to vacation in the U.P. of Michigan. I have driven through all of the abandoned copper mine towns and even in some of the mines themselves, very haunting.
The inflation of population numbers and unwarranted promotion of the relative level of civilization achieved by cultures in the western hemisphere has made this entire field rather suspect in the eyes of historians and archaeologists of Old World cultures. It's not this channel creator's fault, it's just that his entire discipline is considered more than a little dubious by most other professionals. And the motivation for all this seems obvious, so those working in more established branches of history and archaeology don't want to be associated with it.
many times the natives did not even have to dig for copper. The largest piece of native copper in the world was found on a river bank in the upper peninsula of michigan, just a couple miles from where I grew up. the piece must have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years, as there were visible chunks taken out of it. even nowadays you can walk through the woods, pick up a rock, and itll be ridiculously heavy due to the amount of copper in it. you can also stuble upon weird deep holes in the ground where natives dug for copper thousands of years ago. not many people live in this area so maybe thats the reason we've never had any archeological digs. people tend to forget this whole area exists.
There were ancient vertical shafts with wood cribbing placed under copper to lift giant native copper pieces found on Isle Royale. The cribbing and copper were still there discovered by early explorers.
I was told no cribbing technology...I know n.e. Wisconsin better...cribbing is not simple , and slightly counter intuitive...do you have extraordinary proofs ?... I do hate to ask...see yaz!
@@tomg3290 I cannot remember where I read it. Perhaps it was in Superior Heartland by Fred Rydholm. I remember there was a copy of an original drawing of the cribbing with the article.
Thank you for this, I grew up within spitting distance of those copper mines near the Great Lakes, and learned NOTHING about them in school. Ever since, I've read whatever book or watched whatever video I see about it. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a giant copper ingot mined from the area, and I love that they're very similar to the metal ingots produced in the Middle East - roughly rectangular, with 'handles' on the corners. Some things are universal. (No I don't think aliens taught them; I think most humans solve the same problem the same way. Haha.)
Oh my…. This is what RUclips (or the internet) is all about! I’ve learned as much about the Ancient Americas in the last 13 minutes as I have in all of my schooling combined. Just unreal dude. Thank you. Now, I’m going back in for the remaining 15 minutes of this one video. Of course, I’ll smash that like and subscribe as well as check out your other videos. Well done.
i love how you consistently paint a positive picture of the indigenous people-we were inquisitive and economical, we made rational decisions based on the specific economic realities of our time, I appreciate that you made that clear. Also I thought of a decent analogy for the shift from utilitarian to decorative/symbolic use of a cooper-diamonds-although we could mine them for tools, and they do make great tools-it's kind of overkill, we like them bc they're pretty :-)
@Greg N, holding a Masters degree in History, i am ashamed I did not know this, but then again i am a product of the US k-12 school system, and the only thing we learned about Native American cultures was virtually nothing. Sure we learned about crops, thanksgiving and a little on Native American removal, but as far as everyday life we learned nothing. Thanks for the information, it gives me a starting point to research this topic. Just googled "first instance of copper smelting" and they came back with Serbia in around 5500 BC making them the first known users of copper , your info states this group of people started smelting copper 8500BC, is your information well known in the field metallurgy, if its not maybe you should contact the peer reviewed media to have them update their info?
@@mikeaskme3530 Thank you! And to clear up some confusion, copper working and copper smelting are different things. Copper was never smelted in Eastern North America. It was only cold hammered. You'll see that the dates for copper working go much further back than copper smelting. I hope that clarifies things a bit.
@@AncientAmericas it clears it up, i am not that versed in metallurgy, but would it still place North Americans natives the first to work with copper though? In any case, i guess we can say today that ideals of working with metal, may have been a multiregional discovery process, no? Kind of like with West Africans and their metal working process, some steps that were taken in other parts of the world, are not present in the history of West Africans working with metals, showing a multi-regional discovery, working with mineral ores. In any case it is fascinating that this is getting the recognition it deserves.
Wonderful video. I was born in 1933, in an Arizona copper mining town. My dad and 2 uncles were exempted from being soldiers during WW2 because the Nation needed skilled miners more than soldiers. I wish the video had covered copper mines of the western US.
My brother found an artifact cache that consisted of several extremely nice chert blades, red ochre, and a copper tablet. Apparently only one other copper tablet was known to exist in North America at the time.
@@TheLastNameR I couldn't tell you. It was sold to one of the most well-known Native American artifact collectors/experts on the planet. He passed away several years after the sale, so I don't know what came of it.
In the Tallahassee natural history museum there is a copper tomahawk on display and states it was probably a barter item to symbol a hierarchy because the metal is rather useless. They managed to retrace the origin and are certain it came from lake superior. That being said, that tomahawk got passed around for no telling how long until it ended up at a dig site in Florida.
Very interesting! Thank you! My grandparents had a cabin in the UP & were avid Rockhounds & Lapidarists. We used to have to take a ferry boat across from the lower peninsula. The Chief Wawatum. They often walked the beaches of the Keweenaw for Agates & Thompsonites. I have a nice big chunk of native copper grand dad gave me 60 years ago. There was a tavern near Calumet that would accept nice copper specimens from the locals in trade for libations. The piece I have was purchased there. I've been down in the Arcadian mine several times back then. Copper is cool.
Sitting on a high bluff above the Rio Grande river, talking with someone, I was idly sifting soil from a little dry rivulet. I located hundreds of chips (1/8”) of abalone, coral, turquoise, and a white, pretty stone. As the location was not only pleasant, but located so someone sitting there had a long-distance view in all directions, it seems it was either a great place to trade for goods from elsewhere, or work there while keeping a lookout for whatever needed looking out for. The location was several hundred miles from the source of the turquoise, and up to two thousand miles from a couple of the others.
I would speculate that the decline in copper tool use may have been a result of thousands of years of native copper gathering: They used up nearly all the highly pure, easy to find, easy-to-get-to surface deposits of native copper or simply mineable native copper. In effect, the source material may have just become scarce. It isn't exactly easy to find this stuff, even nowadays with modern methods, just lying on the surface or available in outcroppings. We managed to do this with gold in the U.S. during the gold rushes: at first it was easy to find, with people even commenting you could dig up gold "like digging potatoes" in some places, or pluck nuggets from streams as easily as gathering shells on the beach. But rather soon, all the easy pickings were stripped and it was no longer readily available. Other peoples around the globe resorted to hard-rock mining and smelting of large quantities of non-native ore to continue obtaining metals, but North American natives never seem to have resorted to that. Why? That's a whole other story...
@@snowmiaow That's a bit more complicated. The gold they had was largely placer gold from surface deposits. They did little mining, and it wasn't used for tools because it was soft, only for decorative or religious objects. So no, they didn't have large-scale gold mining (Although the Spanish did force them to mine gold as slave labor after conquering them on occasion). It just wasn't something they did. At least not until post-European contact, when some decided to do it because they could trade it to Europeans for lots of high-value goods. So no, the Aztecs, Incas, Maya, etc... only hunted for gold and gems in surface deposits, and didn't do hard-rock mining except on very rare occasions pre-contact. So why did they seem to have so much gold, which we know the Spanish plundered from them? Because there had been a LOT found there on the surface over many generations and it built up, because gold doesn't rust away and wasn't used for tools and so didn't wear down to dust. Whatever they found just kind-of stayed in the royal families and got stockpiled for generations. The Spanish also identified areas where the natives knew gold was, then forced them to mine it, and other precious metals and gems, and so many tons of these materials were quickly mined out from the easy deposits the natives knew of, but did not industrial-scale mine themselves until forced by their conquerors.
A few years ago I read about a very early archaic burial of young female in northern Minnesota, she was buried with a conch shell knife with Caribbean origin. I do not remember where I read it unfortunately. But I believe the location was near the ash river mouth. I’m amazed that trade could go that far, 7,000 years ago.
Nick, I've always found it interesting that we modern folks, think of ancients as being somehow less than ourselves. They were the same as us.....intelligent, inventive, and always seeking resources and knowledge. And, they were more driven than most modern people. They were used to working hard to survive. The local market was the forest and fields, with no easy or speedy transportation, and alive with things that saw them as a meal. And, they had thousands of generations of knowledge and tradition to follow and build on. Most moderns can't imagine people from the previous generation having anything on them, let alone those of a thousand years ago. We're spoiled....and it could be ourdownfall, if we aren't careful. Have a good day sir.
Watching this only days after I have seen that one of best preserved fundaments of pre-war buildings near our summer house is being destroyed because they are building more summer houses in the area 😢 I am still depressed, so many memories of that place
@@rs5536 nothing, I think. Especially if you are not where I am from. But people here don't care 😑 they think it is not old enough to be considered history. Even though several decades more, and it probably will be. But there are much more ancient and valuable historical buildings destroyed by time and our politicians' greed in my region, and noone who can do anything, cares, and people who care cannot do anything
I remember trying to write a fantasy setting in a parallel Earth (involving multiverse-type stuff), and wanted to place a Bronze Age civilization somewhere on the Americas. As it turned out, the Great Lakes area was pretty much the only feasible location, after looking at various maps of copper and tin deposits in North America, as it was the only region where the two metals could be found in any sort of close proximity. Pretty much anywhere else that one metal was found was too far from the nearest source of the other metal to be reliably traded for significant Bronze production. Of course, in our timeline, it doesn't seem the Natives bothered alloying copper with tin, because the ready-made state of native copper meant that they would have never needed to use tin in the first place. Ironic that the most suitable place in the Americas for a Bronze Age Civilization to arise never had a need to develop Bronze in the first place.
@@109Rage And the western Mesoamericans, southern Colombians. and bear in mind its not the 'inca'. Bronze smelting had existed for centuries before the Inca Empire even existed.
Some stone, like obsidian is actually much sharper than your average modern knife. Definitely superior to copper, so it's not surprising that they ended up using copper for more decorative things.
I'm just going to say the same thing as EVERYONE: great job. The number 1 thing I like about a channel is the narrator's voice because no matter how interesting a subject there are such irritating narrator's. So thanks for that and the subject matter. I recently found out I'm 35% native American and you have the best channel I've seen lately. I'll sign up and hope you get more subscribers.
@@AncientAmericas right on. I'm mostly yaqui but I'm in mt Shasta now exploring my modoc roots. If you can find anything interesting enough to make a decent show about us that would be priceless. Mt Shasta supposedly was a holy gathering place of the tribes .thanks
One thing too I wanted to mention: in school our jewelry-making instructor wouldn’t let us use copper because it was so much more difficult to work with than silver or nickel. It has a higher melting point, it’s harder when solid, so difficult to hammer or grind, and a pain to cut with a jewelry saw, because it kind of shreds, and catches on the teeth of the blade. He said it wasn’t worth the savings to give beginners a more difficult metal to work. Later I took a sculpture class in which we worked with bronze, using the lost wax method of casting. The molded piece would have ragged edges that needed removed or polished and I can attest to the material’s unmalleable nature. Probably quite a lot like copper.
Back in the early 1900’s the family farm in Wayne County, Ohio was a treasure trove of Indian arrowheads. My understanding is that a family member found a copper bowl among the many Indian artifacts in the fields at that time.
I'm just discovering your channel. You're doing a really good job with these. I appreciate all the detail. Would you consider doing a video on the people's of the pacific northwest? I love exploring cultures, and our locals have some pretty fascinating traditions and stories that may pique your interest. Thanks again for the quality work that you're putting in. Good luck with your future efforts.
This kind of sounds mostly coming from western archeologists and historians. I belong to one of the Michigan first nations and copper has a religious and cultural importance to us. Copper just isn't a mineral that we use for just anything, it often is used in religious ceremony and for our eating/drinking utensils because the belief that it purifies food and water as an anti-bacterial. I know of one elder that has a drum fastened with copper straps and studs that have been in his family for 15 generations. It is also important to note that the Anishinaabe (the first nations tribes of this area) were known to be traders, Michigan and Grand Rapids (a city in Michigan) were the trade capitals of the Americas. There is evidence shown that the Anishinaabe traded as far south as South America, copper has been found down there as well as things like certain shells found in our burial mounds in the midwest/Canada. Those shells also have a religious meaning to us and have been used in ceremony and art, and are only from a certain area in Mexico.
Crazy to think someone may have been alive at a time when he saw his edged tools change from copper to steel. Imagine what a giant leap in performance that must have felt like.
Imagine the erosive destruction from melting two mile thick ice in only several thousand years. Humans moving back into thawed areas must have seen some crazy landscapes
You nailed the patreon idea!, visible, not invasive, just perfect. Great intro btw. Please make a video of the southern tip of America i live there, in Chile!
I am always on the lookout for great historical/archeological content on RUclips and this is honestly such an amazing channel. Thanks for all the hard work I know these videos must take. The research and quality of the videos are great! 10 out of 10
WOW.. I hope you are not serious.. why dont you check out a Jon Levi video and see if you still think this is a 10 out of 10.. I mean there is just no deep dives or any personal insight.. he is just blindly trusting some people and blindly disagreeing with others based on some political ideology or some personal agenda. With an truly open mind and using logic and reason this video could have been spectacular!! I agree there was some solid info, but come on we arent kids...
@@parisdegrassie1013 When I said had a lot of exposure to other historical and archeological content, I wasn't kidding. I did not not make the comparison blindly or without context. This is genuinely a great channel with the perfect amount of info to make it entertaining and educational without being a full on lecture video...which are great in small doses, but not something you can binge, like these videos. While there are others whom I would also rate a 10 out of 10, I stick to my original assessment, that this is a great channel. Also, I keep hearing political influence, but I have seen nothing but facts and unbiased conclusions being offered as evidence throughout this channel, so I have no idea what you even mean by this.
@@Sai_Srikar_Panjala Fair enough, but dont be confused and think that I said YOU were blindly agreeing with anything. I meant the creator of this video. I guess I worded my first comment wrong, and I sound pretty arrogant reading it back. But I have been on a kick of really having my mind blown about history for months, so I was just shocked to see this tickled your fancy, when there are absolutely incredible videos on this site that cover the same content, but used logic and reasoning in place of blindly agreeing with academia.. and the results are awe inspiring! Just check out ruclips.net/video/Z_MbPtpCRNI/видео.html I think you will understand what I mean after viewing that short video. Like I said I agree that there was some good info, and I thanked the creator for taking his time to make this video, but could have been soo much more with a real open mind
A number of years ago I hiked part of the north coast trail of Isle Royale and came across many small marked quarries of ancient copper mining. I hiked the length of Isle Royale. On the Greenstone Trail came upon a now closed 19th century copper mining area. The area had dangerous fenced open shafts, the water in the area is poisoned, and the park has warning signs not to filter local water. The north coast trail was wet and rugged, the Greenstone Trail is a ridge trail and much easier. The trails in the southwest of Isle Royale are nice with access to a nice bay, great camping, great views, and a trail to a west coast beach to watch sunsets. I found a Greenstone while looking at the small pebbles sitting on the beach.
This is making me rethink something I found in Florida back in high-school or middle-school. While walking around a lake in my neighborhood I found a ~7" metal knife/spearpoint (what it looked like to my mind) in the mud. It looked like stone at first but it felt like metal so I passed it under a metal-detector which beeped. The whole thing was coated in some kind of grey oxidation that gave it a stone-like appearance. The side that had been exposed out of the mud looked like it had been beaten into shape by while the underside was more rounded and lumpy. One of its edges looked intentionally flat while the other rounded off slightly. I took it to someone at a local museum who looked very interested in it at first but then said it was probably a replica when they learned it was metal. It seemed odd to me that a large replica of a stone tool made of metal would show up randomly by a lake in my neighborhood but I took their word for it. I never did take the time to figure out what kind of metal it was made of but now I am wondering if it might be worth the time.
Interesting. We’re all taught North American Indians didn’t have metal working so we assume it was always like that. This was long long before even “Indians” as we know them.
When discussing the decrease of copper as tools, it's important to note, that stone tools can be made sharper. And kept sharper much more easily. It seems to me oh, that once they started Trading shinies and pretties, they wouldn't have any trouble accessing good churt or even, obsidian. As you noted. Very new to your Channel. And I am very much enjoying your content.
Thank you! It's been awhile since I did the research for this so I may be remembering this slightly wrong but I read paper by an archaeologist who did replicative studies comparing stone and copper points and while you can make a stone point much sharper, it dulls fairly quickly to the sharpness of a copper point so sharpness was likely not the big factor in why they stopped being used. It's not like you're going to make a new point for every hunting trip because that would be wasteful of imported material. Also worth mentioning, the copper points on average got deeper penetration, albeit not by much so I'm doubt that that was a factor in keeping copper either way. She speculated that once they were able to get those types of stone, it was just much more time efficient to produce tools. If you are interested, check out the bibliography in the description and read up on it. It's interesting. (At least I found it interesting.)
@@AncientAmericas Thanks, I will definitely check that out. I am surprised about the sharpness. I think that would definitely depend on the stone being used. Obsidian blades are occasionally used for extremely delicate surgeries. Because modern surgical steel, cannot be made as sharp, as obsidian. Time would certainly be a factor. A stone blade can be re-sharpened in a couple of minutes. However, copper is definitely much tougher. I will have to look at her research. Thanks again
I grew up in Michigan and boy howdy the copper thing is huge. It's damn cool! Loved going to the Lansing museum and they have this whole mine exhibit talking about it.
One of the interesting aspects of copper is that in high concentrations is that copper compounds acts as preservatives. One ironic find was a hafted stone-flaking tool of native copper, where the copper preserved the organic hafting. As a matter of fact, a copper arrowhead is more durable than stone, but good chert or obsidian are both vastly harder, and yield sharper edges. The use of imported stone is peculiar though. Apparently copper was valuable enough that it off set the cost of importing usable stone. As concerns why copper was never smelted by the OCT, in the Old World and in South America, metallurgy _follows_ pottery. The use of controlled high heat is necessary for pottery is critical before metal ores can be refined into metals.
The Hudson Bay Company, and the North West Company in Canada paid for furs from the Cree, Ojibway, Dene, Blackfoot and Metis peoples with copper kettles. The kettles could be easily reworked into a hundred different items, and in the meantime could be used for food storage.... or for that matter as kettles. This continued until the mid 19th century. There is only one easily accessible source of tin in the Americas, and that's in Mexico. Mexican metallurgists did develop bronze as a luxury product. But there would never have been enough tin available to produce the kind of Bronze Age revolution that occurred in China and the Middle East. Even in the old world, it was the availability of tin that determined if bronze could be made cost-effectively, and that metal was traded over enormous distances ---- with Phoenician ships regularly sailing to Britain to get the product of the Cornish tin mines.
For sure. I'm sure that copper was very appreciated but it wouldn't explain all the copper that had been in burials for thousands of years. You can actually make bronze with other metals besides tin. Arsenic was used to make bronze in many parts of the world where tin wasn't available.
@@AncientAmericas My point was that tin was in limited supply in the new world. Mexico's bronzes were perfectly good tin-based bronzes, because they had a supply of tin, but not a big supply. South America had tin-based bronzes in the mid-north (Ecuador, northern Peru) and arsenical bronzes in the mid-south (Bolivia, Argentina) because it had modest supplies of tin and somewhat better supplies of arsenical copper ores. Neither resource was on the scale available to the Old World. This seems to be why what became a large scale utility product in Eurasia remained a luxury product in the Americas. The basic crops (maize in North America and potatoes in South America) were "gardened" in a manner that did not especially benefit from metal tools and plows, so there would not have been the spur to use it outside the upper classes that you find with Old World crops like wheat and barley, which grow best where a strong plow is needed to break sod. Cheap bronze revolutionized every aspect of Old World life, and led to a similar and even greater transformation with cheaper and still more plentiful iron. Tin-based, arsenical and combinations of the two all had different advantages and disadvantages for different products. But the fantastic cheapness of iron, with its widespread sources of ore (the Scandinavians did quite well with bog iron), and great strength, ensured that it would take the lead when the way to produce it was discovered. In North America, the really big source of copper, the Great Lakes region, was very far away from Mexico's tin sources. Combine all these factors, and you get less of an emphasis on metallurgy in the New World beyond shaping raw copper. My mention of the copper kettles in northern Canada was not intended to "explain" anything about ancient burials in mounds! The use of copper doesn't need any special explanation --- its utility is self-evident. I was merely making an observation that copper remained an important trade item to Canadian First Nations well into modern times. It is similar to saying that modern Canadians still enjoy a lot of maple syrup today, though its use dates back into the mists of time. (In fact, just an hour ago I had a maple donut from Tim Horton's, like a good Canadian).-
@@philpaine3068 All cultures quite naturally use what's plentiful in their region and figure out how to make the most of it. I'm chuckling now because as I was reading your posts I was thinking, "right, you don't see a history of maple syrup in areas that simply don't have maple trees" ... and sure enough, you mentioned maple syrup. ;)
@@dogslobbergardens6606 The province of Quebec maintains a Fort Knox-type emergency stockpile of 39 million pounds of maple syrup, known as the Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve ---- which shows you just how seriously Canadians take their syrup. The global economy may collapse, a meteor may wipe out half of civilization, but our pancakes, donuts, and creme cookies will still have their sacred sweetness.
@@philpaine3068 I grew up in WI where we feel our maple syrup is at least equal to if not better than Canadians'... but let's not get into a rivalry ;)
@@aaronmccullough2605 it didn't though. There were massive excavations conducted during the Works Progress Administration, and all that work was published in the 50s (ish). The whole discipline was professionalized in the 60's when archaeological preservation law was put in place, then the TVA did a ton of work here when all the reservoirs were being done back in the 70's and 80's. We've really been doing quite a bit of archaeology here since the 1920s.
Wow, this completely changed my understanding of ancient American cultures. I knew they had metalworking but I was shocked to learn that there was trade which ultimately moved goods over such long distances.
A massive portion of NA used a documented sign-language to support these activities. If it wasn't for the apparent mega-drought cycle, and maybe the lack of plentiful & desirable pack animals (deer seem to almost never be treated as subjects of domestication, and it's seemingly a minor miracle that cattle were domesticated at all), there probably would have been _much_ more development than actually happened.
There are flint extraction sites in North Texas (the Alibates Flint Quarries) whose colorful and high-quality flint has been found all over North America. I wouldn’t be surprised if Alibates Flint was traded for Keeweenaw Copper
I am a metal shaper and do the exact same thing with non ferrous metals. When I shape copper, bronze or aluminum they work harden and will end up cracking. So during my work, I will cover the metal with carbon from the acetylene torch and then use a hit neutral flame to burn the carbon off and the panels is soft again so that I can keep shrinking and stretching the panel into shape. I make car bodies from flat sheets of metals.
I'm a metal detectorist and while I do agree that taking an artifact (copper in this case) from it's original location does loose it's context and provenance . (unless you keep the gps location and pictures and report it) It is also true that if it were not for farmers or detectorist etc most of these items would probably not be found at all and further decay and corrode in the ground until their is little to nothing left of the object. From my experience as a numismatist and finding copper coins both old and new in the ground is that copper does not do as well as you would think long term in the ground. It largely depends on the soil and moisture content. Even modern pennies from the 70's you can find the beginnings of corrosion. I found an 1826 Large copper one cent (Rowley, Massachusetts) that was virtually unrecognizable until I cleaned it up with some soap and water and toothbrush, then by looking at it under certain light with magnification I could make out just enough features to identify it. In contrast silver does extremely well in the ground from the silver coins I have found. An 1841 seated liberty dime I found at the same location as the large copper cent had deep tone/tarnish but only minor pin prick size pitting.
There is a revolutionary era prison in Connecticut that was located in an old copper mine...its still there as a museum I think...makes you wonder if the indigenous people knew about the copper source before the Europeans came
How common was tin in the Old Copper Culture? Bronze requires both copper and tin. Although it is entirely possible that the creative and intelligent indigenous Americans simply did not have the lucky observation that combining copper and tin creates a harder metal (bronze), I have to wonder if maybe a lack of access large quantities of tin played a role. My understanding is that one of the primary reasons why the bronze age took off on the Afro-Eurasian land mass was due to the creation of trade networks that enabled access to tin across a wide geographical area, enabling the spread of bronze working technology. Without the ability to transform copper, an incredibly soft and ductile metal, into bronze, there is no reason to abandon lithic technology.
I'm honestly not sure. You can use other metals to make bronze though and even more metals to make other copper alloys. You'll see in south america that once people figure out how to smelt metal, they start making all sorts of alloys but it still takes a little while to get to bronze.
@@AncientAmericas Excellent points. I did not think about other copper alloys. Do you know whether these alloys offer similar advantages over lithic tech that traditional bronze would? I find the mystery of why indigenous Americans did not go the route of a bronze age to be highly intriguing. I know that going toward a bronze age is not an inevitability and would depend on a larger context that I, as an amateur, do not yet fully understand. That said, indigenous Americans were clearly resourceful and intelligent enough to pursue a bronze age if the right conditions were in place. The fact that copper alloys were available in some cultures makes this question even more fascinating to me. Thanks and keep up the great work!
@@MrManifolder The Inca do figure out bronze prior to contact. As to other copper alloys, I'm not aware of any being used for tools. The ones I've seen have been used in ornaments and personal adornment but I could be wrong.
@@AncientAmericas I didn't realize the Inca went that route. Very interesting. Thanks! I've heard rumors that there might be evidence of possible trade contacts between South Americans and Polynesians. Do you think there is enough to possibly address it in a future video or do you think our knowledge of such contact still inconclusive?
@@MrManifolder also having seen a bunch of history/archaeology channels on RUclips trying to replicate ancient bronze smelting, it isn't just chucking a bunch of copper and tin ore in to a pit and bam bronze. You have to get decent quality of ore especially tin ore to stand a good chance of getting usable bronze out of the process, along with good temperature control.
🤯 I had never heard anything about any of this before! What a fascinating subject, and what a truly professional style of presentation. If you taught college courses I'd enroll in every class. LOVE this channel! Thanks so much for your work! 👏👏
I have a cool, very small copper ring with an interesting design on it from upper Peninsula Michigan. Another interesting point is that in the early 1900s, they dug up the mound in North Georgia, and it had an ancient copper ax traced to Michigan copper. Interesting, unknown history. My ring had to be a kid's ring, a princess most likely....??? In the end, America went away from copper due to the huge amount of work and resources it took to smelt and work copper. Flint, Chert or whatever is so easy to make a razor sharp tool from. It is also interesting that mainstream history says the copper age was from 4,000 BC. America's copper age predates this by about 1,000 years!!! History needs to be updated!
Sure, but archaeologists would argue that those contexts suggest that they are recent arrivals not ancient leftovers. You're certainly free to disagree with their conclusions.
this is awesome! you gotta do one on the Calusa! or Floridas first peoples! They are the most underated kingdoms in the americas! they defeated the conquistadors for 200 years!
I love the insight into the Americans these videos give me!!! I've been looking for so long a good video series to learn about pre-Columbian American cultures that isn't degrading!!! Love these!!!!!!
I recently discovered your channel, and happy to see it exists. I've always wanted to do something like this myself. One thing that stands out to me in this video though is that you mention that the Old Copper complex didn't have any shaft mines. I remember Whittlesey discussing some in "Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior" (the first - my knowledge - major scholarly work on what would later be called the Old Copper Complex). I'll have to pick up Martin's "Wonderful Power" from my university library again to see if she discusses them there as well - off hand, I can't remember. In any case, even the deepest of these shafts were no more than 6 meters, so probably weren't what you were thinking of when discussing deep excavation.
Thanks! I read that book cover to cover and I don't recall any shaft mining being discussed. That said, the book is over 20 years old and there may be new evidence.
@@AncientAmericas To be fair, Whittlesey's book is more than 150 years old so it might be more likely that the shafts he discusses were later found to not be associated with the Old Copper Complex. He was, after all, writing in the early days of formal American archaeology. I spent some time this afternoon trying to track down some additional information on the sites he mentions so see what follow-up studies in the last century and a half have turned up, but haven't tracked anything down yet.
This feels almost like a weird strategy game scenario. "They rushed their research points to skip from the ice age straight to the copper age while the other players were still in the stone age."
WOOHOO WISCONSIN EPISODE. Fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing. I almost wish I had a metal detector, but if I come across anyone with one, I'll give them the lowdown on preserving context
Can't believe I just found this channel! I just bingewatched practically everything you've done. It's really amazing stuff. And from a fellow Wisconsinite no less! If you're ever out in the Driftless Region and want to go digging, hit me up.
One thing you missed when talking about European skepticism on native copper working, is that they saw the natives using European iron and steel and making that into their own goods. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to just assume that they did the same with copper. Especially since not much copper mining was done by the time they arrived.
That is true. There are many accounts of indigenous peoples working iron and I'm sure some European copper probably got reworked as well. However, it's important to keep in mind that those theories were being used to explain native copper sources around the turn of the 20th century. By then, archaeology had been going on for decades in the US and plenty of ancient burials had been found with copper artifacts. Not only that Europeans had begun mining in the Keweenaw and there are accounts of them finding traces of ancient mining. The evidence was clearly there and had been pointed out by many archaeologists. Unfortunately, many of those scholars were sticking their heads in the sand. That skepticism is understandable in the 1600's. By 1900, it's much harder to defend it.
I love that everytime i look up something I want to learn about on RUclips it seems that someone recently uploaded something about it, I hope it never ends
When my dad was a kid he got to help some archaeologists dig up a old Indian village along the Missouri River in South Dakota before they flooded the valley to build a lake. They found a copper or brass buckle .they let my dad have it because the site was to old to have copper artifacts.and didn’t want it to mess with there data .Or it didn’t fit with there timeline .You can still see the rings from the tree that they carved the starburst shape into .Then poured the Metal onto to make it on the back of it .My dad always believed it was a Native American artifacts that belong with the other artifacts at the site.
This video just showed up as a suggestion today for me and I'm so glad it did! This video is fantastic and it answers some questions about indigineous American culture that I didn't even begin to know how to ask. Looking forward to much more from you, you've definitely earned another subscriber!
Bronze usually consists of copper allied with tin, zinc or even lead. Since the copper in the Wisconsin/Michigan region was pure copper and not ore, there was no requirement to smelt it. The native American metal workers didn't need to melt it-just pull copper nodules out of the ground and cold work them to shape-there was no possibility of 'discovering' bronze by melting the copper and adding alloy elements. Copper in Europe and the middle east was mainly ore and needed to be smelted to produce metal. They stumbled on the discovery that adding things like tin, zinc, lead, arsenic, etc. to molten copper gave it strength and improved properties. You have to wonder what might have transpired if native American metal workers had discovered bronze? There are tin deposits in Zacatecas, Mexico, so all the ingredients for high quality bronze were there.
@@KuroiGodofDeath Inca and the Sican cultures of south America had Arsenic Copper, but not classic bronze. Bronze is an alloy of copper and primarily tin. As Desmond Murphy noted, Brass is an alloy of Zinc and Copper. Arsenic copper usually has arsenic trace alloy within the copper metal as mined, it's not added to melted copper as an intended alloy element. Arsenic copper has improved properties over pure copper, but it isn't really a bronze because no tin is present.
Reminds me of the meteorites that natives found in northern canada and greenland. BIG meteors like the the cape york that weigh many tons, even tens of tons. The natives around these meteors would chip off bits of the high nickel iron that composed them, and cold forged these fragments into small tools and edges for their weapons.
Great topic! I’m endlessly fascinated with Paleolithic Science. I would add that we have a collection of Mammoth kill sites here in Arizona that have dated to 15,000 years. In addition there are the fossil footprints found in White Sands National Park in New Mexico. The discoverers initially dated them to 25,000 years. They have since retracted that date due to pressure from the scientific community.. It’s interesting how the established “period” is not allowed to shift and if it does, Academics are fast to jump all over it and declare it incorrect.
That's kinda funny because there's been really compelling archaeology from the past few years that pushed back habitation in the US thousands of years back.
If you follow the story of the Paleolithic Footprints you’ll watch the dates change from older to younger. It’s really strange.. I believe this continent has been inhabited for at least the 25 to 30 thousand year period. As you rightly pointed out the sea levels were lower and obviously there may be hundreds of Paleolithic sites along the coast we will never know about.
What is your reference for a copper arrowhead performing better than one fashioned from obsidian or chert? The stone tips are significantly sharper than whatever you could hope to achieve with a soft metal like copper (a properly knapped flint edge is surgically sharp and all arrows ideally kill by hemmoraging) additionally, the soft nature of copper makes it really inferior to stone as an arrow head because it will very likely bend or curl if striking anything other than soft tissue and even then it might.
Check out my bibliography in the description. Specifically, look at the work by Michelle Bebber. She's done replicative experiments with copper and stone points. Copper points actually perform slightly better in most cases and they work really well. The data is all in the article. The downside is that they require a lot more time and energy to make.
@@AncientAmericas from her page: "We experimentally confirmed that replica copper tools are inferior to stone ones when each is sourced in the same manner as their archaeological counterparts and subjected to identical tasks." Copper in pure form would be far inferior to chert or obsidian for arrow tips in several ways: a. in time to manufacture (arrows are, in large part) consumables. you end up losing a lot of them. b. in duability (ruclips.net/video/7qiqmzZk0j0/видео.html) penetration test against steel, but it's on a real cadaver deer. c. and in lethality (a stone point is orders of magnitude sharper than one of copper, remember it's hemmoraging that brings the animal down, not the presence of a hole in its body cavity) d. There's also the high probably that a relatively pure copper point, being soft, would bend or curl on impact and deflect the path of the arrow, limiting penetration and hence lethality. I've experienced this phenomenon with Stainless steel broadheads and they are orders of magnitude stiffer than copper. It's apparent, that without the transition to a stronger alloy (bronze), the tribes realized their copper was best utilized (highest value) for trading as jewlery for superior stone points used in hunting or at least the materials to make such points on their own as well as other specialized goods and trade items.
@@stankfaust814 Cool video! I only had her research when I was writing this up but I wish I'd been able to see that. Out of curiosity, did you read her work end to end? She goes into further detail about her methodology and the results. According to her experiments, copper fails because its more difficult to source and craft, not so much because of shortcomings with its performance. To be fair, her methods are different than those in the video so we aren't exactly comparing apples to apples.
The earliest mention by Europeans of the copper from the Great Lakes is probably by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who was marooned on the coast of Florida in the 1520s, and walked west to what is now Texas before being rescued... At one point in his narrations he mentions the fine jewelry made of the northern copper...
Unfortunately my first exposure to this topic was a "documentary" on discovery or the history channel claiming that Phoenicians settler there because of the copper some 3000 years ago, silly as that is
@@AncientAmericas Not really. There's no debate that the Phoenicians brought in tin from the British Isles. There were sources of copper in the Mediterranean, but tin was very limited. While there wouldn't be a need for copper, the Phoenicians were an extremely capable maritime culture and we shouldn't ignore the possibility of trans-Atlantic trade. In fact, there is a great deal of evidence for it. Egyptian mummies were found to have used cocaine and tobacco - both products of the Americas. There are numerous similarities between the megalithic cultures of the old world with those of Central and South America. There would seem to have been some contact, most likely at a much older date, with a currently unknown culture. When we look at the myths of the oldest civilizations, they all state that their knowledge and technological capability was given to them from an outside source - whom they refer to as "gods", from Thoth, to Oannes, to Quetzalcoatl. It is foolish to dismiss this a coincidence, as there are far too many examples. What we are likely dealing with is an advanced civilization, highly proficient in navigation and ship building, that travelled widely sharing their knowledge with other cultures around the globe. That is why we see the chalcolithic period beginning at roughly the same time in North America as we did in the Old World. Correlation and causality are a much more mathematically viable than coincidence, after all.
@@Shin_Lona indeed there is plenty of evidence. Phoenicians, Scandinavian, Celts, Romans, Egyptian. But to openly speak of it by most today seems taboo. I live in New England. Our miles of stone walls, standing stones, stone structures, speak of other cultures that are not Native American. Within the boundaries of Quebec, Cape Cod, and Pennsylvania may peak the interest of many. Hanno the Navigator should be looked into. Happy hunting
I’m not sure I fully understand all of the context involved in the comment section and the various disagreements contained therein, but I would like to say that this video essay is very well produced and appears to be thoughtfully researched. Thank you for taking the time to create it.
If you want to learn more about the ancient Southwest here is a recommendation I have. I took Pre-History of the American Southwest in Pima Collage and the textbook we used was titled: Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest by Stephen Plog, Second edition. Admittedly even the teacher acknowledged it's a bit outdated so maybe check out the author's later works but is still filled with great information. Some notable things that are outdated are: There are three main cultures categorized by archaeologists. They are the Hohokam, Mogollon and Ancient Pueblo. In the book "Ancient Pueblo" is referred as "Anasazi" but it would changed long after the book's publication because it was considered offensive by local communities. Another thing about it being outdated is that the Mogollon and Ancient Pueblo have a lot of information while the Hohokam doesn't have a lot. That's because back then archaeologists were stuck in the fall and winter teaching so when summer rolls in its to hot to work in Arizona (where the Hohokam sites are), so instead they go to higher altitudes in New Mexico and Colorado (where the other two are). It's until recently that archaeologists are finding time. This is what my professor told me. That class was a long time ago but I love it. One of the best classes I had, would recommend. Hope you find this information useful.
@@AncientAmericas Also the reason in Chaco Canyon no one but tribal members are allowed in the kivas is because hippies were burying crystals in the floors to "recharge" them. -_-
I come from a long line of copper mines miners starting in n Jalisco from the 1500’s up to New Mexico until my dad’s generation and everywhere inbetwen with every generation. From the biggest open copper mine in the US Morenci Arizona.
The Norwegian fur trader and writer Helge Ingstad tells us in his book: In search for the last Apache,one of his Apache guides told him about an old copper smith who knew the seecret of how to harden copper!
I like finding cool stuff, but I hate looters. It seems odd that gold and silver working from Mesoamerica never penetrated that far east when maize did. It's sad how little most people know about how sophisticated Native Americans were. I was on a dig in my community college days in SE Kansas and we found evidence of a flint trade from Missouri. We dated it from the pottery to about 1000 years ago.
I'm almost 65, my older brother like me have been collecting Indian artifacts since we were 7 or 8. He has 3 points he calls " rat tail copper points" he found along the Kankakee River in Indiana close to Illinois 40 years ago. Also a few copper beads. Thank you for this video!!
The Northeast Forest Indians used to put white captive settlers to work hammering copper. Copper was a trade good, and I suspect the finer spear heads were bartered from Mexico. Smelting and casting were unknown to the Native Americans, except for a tribe in the Far Northwest. For cutting and weapons, flint and obsidian gave a finer cutting edge, they were also trade goods.
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your explanation of Annealing is a bit off. the way you explained it sounds like forging, which is not a good way to work copper, it will crumble if worked at those temperatures.
the reason you anneal copper is that it "work hardens" i.e. its crystal structure trends towards hardness as its worked. annealing rearranges this to soften the metal and allow it to be further worked.
the process of annealing involves heating the metal to its annealing temperature and then allowing it to slowly cool back down. once cooled it can then be worked for a time until it becomes harder and you risk cracking and crumbling it, when you anneal it again.
You have provided a much better explanation than I did. Thank you. Metallurgy is not my forte and I'm pinning this so that people can see it.
@@AncientAmericas in addition, the reason for this is that if left to cool on its own, the copper will crystalize into large crystals, which cleave apart from one another when hammered. Quenching the metal causes it to solidify with a minuscule crystal grain. To visualize this imagine forming a bowl out of clay. the clay is malleable because the aggregate is microscopic. now imagine trying to form a bowl out of gravel. the grains are way too big to be ductile or malleable and it just falls apart.
@@casey9439 I often learn more from reading comments than is presented in even good, solid informative videos. Your comment illuminated not only this video, but clarified other observations and contradictions I'd noted elsewhere. Thank you.
@@paulus.tarsensus Thanks. As I see it, we're all just half-informed oafs trying to become informed oafs. Sometimes one of us has a little inkling to share and sometimes another one of us has a different inkling to share
A few other metals work harden too, stainless steel, titanium etc.
As a master-metalsmith who has worked native copper with paleo tech and a dilatant stone knapper with lots of points to my credit I promise that stone tools are much sharper than copper can be made to be. Stone blades are also much better at keeping that edge. Copper is only really superior for it's plastic distortion capacity (the awls and needles for example).
Very good insight!
(Laugh!) Most people don't know or realize that obsidian breaks at the molecular level rather than wears down at the microscopic - thus can make far sharper blades. Knapped obsidian was used as the instrument of choice for surgeons (especially eye surgeons) until lasers came along, because they were so much more sharper than metal blades and left far less scarring.
I'd bet you know that already, though! (My area of expertise is ancient technology and diet, with specific research in chert!)
Talking about stone tool technology - heat treating. Many forms of chert become even more workable and usable if they've been heat-treated before knapping. The heat treating process required a deep understanding and knowledge of the material - almost equal to an engineer's knowledge! I've seen points where the control was so exact that the blade itself was still grey, but the very edge had changed color to red! My ancestors knew enough about it that they were able to successfully heat treat chert - going back to the paleoindian period!
@@RedHeart64 The Clovis era people who faced sabre cats at a range of ten feet or less would have been served best by points of obsidian drawn from a lambs wool transporting sheath. They would have left the copper jewelry in the cabin.
@@williamanderson4395 Obsidian, possibly. It was a valued trade item and people would have traveled far to get it because of it's usefulness and characteristics. We've found Clovis (and PRE-Clovis) points and tools, and they used the best materials available in their area. They've made them of chert on much of this continent. There are also points and tools of heat-treated chert that have been found - and heat-treating chert requires a really deep understanding of the material (it does make it easier to work and more glassy, if done right). Other materials have been used as well. We found one point (and maybe more) that had been heat treated so that the very edge would have changed color (happens with Florida chert and maybe elsewhere) to red, while the rest of the blade remained 'natural' (some shade of gray, maybe mottled). That took a master's understanding of chert - very precise control of temperature and duration to achieve!
Lamb's wool? Not likely... I'm not aware of any domesticated sheep before Columbus. Possibly wool from one of the wild sheep species. There are many other materials that would probably have been used, but also I'd point out that it would have been much more likely they'd have had a spear on hand and used that.
Copper working... Most of the copper working I've read about occurred during the Archaic period and later. (Meteoric Iron also was worked and used to a much smaller degree.) I don't remember anything found in an earlier context, but it's been a while since I've done any reading on copper working/copper artifacts.
Yep... The stone tools of these N. American cultures weren't "primitive". It would take relatively advanced metallurgy to make something generally better. So not much reason for them to faff around with metalworking making inferior stuff. But that means they never figured out the tricks for making metal implements which could surpassed the advanced stone stuff they already had.
The general public thinking that the First Nations were stone age peoples with no metal working technology aside from a little gold and silver in Central America isn't a stereotype, it's a deficiency in education. I had pretty significant schooling in pre-columbian North Americans in my youth and none of the text books or other books mention copper working around the great lakes. It wasn't until a few years ago when I started living near a reserve on the north shore and talking to people there that I'd heard word one about copper tools being made and used before European contact. Thanks so much for the video, I hope it gets shared a ton.
Thank you!
The people who develop these metalworking Traditions were not the Indians are Native Americans that Europeans happened upon in the Fifteenth Century, but a completely different group of people that has long since disappeared
We call people " stone age" because there was no tradition of smelting . There are some cultural aspects used to define copper age that native people did not develope , possibly because of no need . The mines were known by Europeans but people did not want to think natives were doing it so came up with theories of ancient phonea
The bell of Garuda is a copper hand bell someone discovered in a chunk of coal...I thought it was crazy it would be 3 million years old until I did some research on Garuda and found out he's the architect of "Angkor Wat" which just so happens to be millions of years old also...Wonder why my history teacher never spoke of this or Mansa Musa...
@@Laotzu.Goldbug No, that is not true. There is complete continuity between these cultures, fully documented archaeologically. Nobody "disappeared". The First Nations that inhabit the Great Lakes area today are both cultural and biological descendants of those who first mined the copper, and continued to do so into historical times. They changed culturally over time ---- just as every society does ---- but we are not talking about any "completely different group". No legitimate archaeologist or historian will tell you any such nonsense. It is promoted only by crackpots.
When I was in high school in the 1960s we had a neighbor who collected minerals and artifacts. I took him to a site I knew where I had found several arrowheads and later he showed me his collection of copper jewelry made by local Senecas. He told me that the copper came from Wisconsin and was part of the Seneca trade network that stretched south down the Mississippi, east to Long Island and west to Wisconsin. When he died in 1980 his entire collection went to a museum in Buffalo. From him I developed an interest in history and archaeology that I am sorry I did not pursue by going to college because I couldn't afford it.
You are the man
Do you live up north? I loved walking around the Keweenaw, especially so after we bought a house years ago. There were old mines almost in our back yard! I so miss being up there now but illness prevents this now.
@@priscillaross-fox9407 No, I live in Western New York a mile from Lake Ontario.
If that's true you need to contact an archaeologist, because that's potentially a revolutionary discovery.
Copper trade is something that happened thousands of years ago. If there's evidence that it continued to modern days, that's like discovering that people still spoken Sumerian 200 years ago.
@@Ezullof People from a museum in Buffalo have already documented Trade between the Senecas and their neighbors as far west as Wisconsin and south down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Archaeologists have uncovered sites along lake Ontario that show the Senecas moved around a lot more then previously thought.
This area could be the cradle of civilization, however nobody would ever know because there's nearly no archeological activity here and everyone believes there is no history worth knowing. Native history in the Americas holds so many untold secrets. I think this was a really good look at the facts around a long untold story.
You wanna talk about an unknown cradle of civilization, I'd make a case for the Mississippi/Ohio basin. That's the crucible of Hopewell and Mississippian civilization.
@@AncientAmericas so much to discover. By the way did you hear these conspiracy rumors about NASA doing archeological digs in New Mexico? Some kind of native American site but it has very advanced layout. I watched your other video about an anomalous native mound and it seems maybe this NASA dig could be similar in its uniqueness. I saw photos of the dig now whether what they claimed to be was accurate or not is debatable. The source didn't seem credible to me anyway. But if it was credible maybe you could do a video about it? NASA usually flies rockets so why are they digging about? That's some click bait for sure. Also even if it's not true a video debunking it would still get views. I just found your channel today by the way. Keep up the great work cheers
@@AncientAmericas I'm looking forward to the eventual Hopewell episode.
@@JonnoPlays funny I know a guy who says he found anchiet Chinese shipwrecks with gold as a child where a military base now is, even showed me Google Earth images. Think he still has the FBI on speed dial to bitch at them. Honesty I think I believe him.
“White people” were here first, or atleast our ancient ancestors. Look up pictures of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, they were seafarers, and have distinctly “Western” features.
I live in Simcoe County, Ontario (between Georgian Bay of Lake Huron and Lake Simcoe).There’s a really cool collection of books and maps by a guy called Andrew Hunter, called ‘Huron Village Sites of Simcoe County’ (1895-1906). He literally rode around on a bicycle and documented all of the Wendat and Algonquian sites he could find (over 400) and a ton of them have copper artifacts and other items like conch shells and glass beads. He also noted some brass artifacts as well, but that may have been during the French occupation of the area. Great video 👍
super interesting! The Ojibwe also traded with cowrie shells (of which there are none in the Great Lakes region. There are also pueblo sites where dead macaws from South America were found. The amount of trade going on was HUGE.
@@casey9439
Copper from Lake Superior was traded widely across North America. Shells from the Gulf Coast went the other way. High quality stone for tool making was also traded widely.
It's not just in the great lakes region, I'm from southeast Missouri and there is an ancient copper mine behind my dad's house, still has some native drawings on it so a few years ago some scientists from Washington university came to take pics and put them through different filters to pull off images that you can't see with your naked eye and from what they said it was a "shrine" to the underwater panther god
That's super cool! It sounds like thats a Mississippian site if it's to underwater panther god. Do you have the name of that site? I'd love to check it out.
@@AncientAmericas there is no name for it other than what we call it "the Indian bluffs" and the scientist person from Washington university said that they usually don't give locations because all of the art is done on sandstone so when the many meth heads around here try and cut them out and sell them they are usually just destroyed, I honestly don't think they have wrote a thing about it and they definitely haven't dug there ever so I'm not sure what u could find out but it's on the little St Francis river
@@AncientAmericas the scientist guy said it was most likely Mississippian as well but the problem I have is that I've only ever found arrowheads from the archaic to late archaic period, nothing as refined as u see in Cahokia or surrounding areas
@@missourimongoose7643 that doesn't mean it's not Mississippian. Archaic and Woodland people tended to use similar spots on the landscape, so their stuff is likely to show up, and sacred sites tend to have less left behind, so it's not all that surprising that there aren't LW/MT points out there. I WOULD expect shell tempered pottery though.
Who knows. The Mississippians-- the first of which were Caddoan-- weren't the only ones who believed in that thing. So did Algonquians & some Siouans & Iroquoians, albeit sometimes under different names like "Blue Panther," "Snake," "Comet Lion" or "True Lynx" & over time they evolved from a wildcat spirit into something more like a dragon for a lot of cultures. Some of the last Siouan tribes who lived in Missouri before whites were on that list. Still, if the archaeologists who looked it over assumed Mississippian, then they must have more reason for saying as much.
My Saponi ancestors also had a copper mine in the Blue Ridge Mountains that was noted by early Jamestown explorers & there was apparently a silver mine down towards the Cherokee somewhere.
By the way, what were they using the Galena for? This is the first time I'm hearing about this.
The Inuit worked iron from a meteor in Greenland starting at about the same time. The Cape York meteorite is the source of this iron, it came to earth thousands or perhaps 10,000+ years ago.
Using meteorite iron has been a common thing for a *very* long time, vastly predating that.
@@earthknight60 yes, meteoric iron was highly regarded in several different cultures. It was often regarded as magical not only because it came from the heavens, but later on as steel-making spread, sometimes because it really did make demonstrably better steel. In some cases it's been found that the reason it was better than terrestrial iron was that mostly-iron meteorites also had small amounts of alloying elements like vanadium or chromium - which weren't discovered and used on purpose in steel-making until about a century ago.
@@dogslobbergardens6606 There's a lot of evidence iron working is almost as old as copper working. Meteoric iron anyway. There are some really old iron artifacts around if you look for them. King tut had two iron daggers in his tomb, despite egypt being in the bronze age at the time.
Meteoric iron is special stuff. It's actually an alloy akin to stainless steel, if you can believe that. The nickel content makes it easier to cold-work and resist rust as well.
Do you have a source for this? I'd love to hear more!
I had no idea there was any degree of metallurgy in North America north of the Rio Grande. Binge watching your videos now
There was no metallurgy, He said it himself. It was worked as a stone.
@@papadonttakenomess1764 his fave show might be Full metal alchemist, this may be a flash point for him.
Metallurgy - "the branch of science and technology concerned with the properties of metals and their production."
The original comment did not misuse the term. Stop being keyboard warriors in the comments. I thought it was a good comment since most people would agree they had no idea there was as much copper working in this particular area.
@@JonnoPlays I didn't wanna say it... :)
Thanks
Read the Book of Mormon!
The chief gain for copper weapon tips is that they don't break. Making a copper tool a sharp as good chert point is, in fact, impossible. That means the use-life of a copper weapon tip is the length of time between manufacture and loss rather than failure. The OC is a long-term interest of mine, but as an archaeologist in California, not a topic I could spend a lot of time on. Thanks for this.
You're welcome!
Many stone projectile points are found snapped off at their bases. This is not a design flaw, but rather a desired factor. It takes more time and effort to make a good arrow or dart shaft than it does the point. Once shot into the game, the point breaks off and the animal's muscles pull the point deeper into the tissue as the wounded animal runs. The shaft than can be recovered and to animal tracked to its dispatch. This is particularly true in arid regions where appropriate, straight wood is rare. It's easy to flake and haft a new point.
@@dat2ra You're correct about making the shafts being costly, but the archaeological evidence indicates that the points were not wasted. A multipart projectile shaft works bette, than points that break. The point and foreshaft are often expected to come free of the main shaft, which can fall free. One remarkable find in Nevada was a pouch full of Elko - IIRC- points already mounted to fores hafts. A hunter could carry such a pouch along with two to four larger dart shafts and repeatedly re-tip the shafts during a day's hunting.
One common misreading of archaeological projectile points is an inability to observe whether they are reworked or not. Many, possibly a majority, are re-tipped or modified on the distal edges to remove impact damage. The archaeological recovery of bases is very likely due to shaft recovery and rearming, as you note.
Anybody from whom would consider a trip to the copper country of Michigan, I suggest doing it. The region not only has a copper history, but for mineral collectors there are many interesting rocks. For those less interested in native American history & more interested in industrial history the entire region is the Detroit of the 1920s. It was the best in the world & over night everybody left & didn't take there stuff with them.
The Keweenaw Peninsula is a fascinating region with it’s history and scenic beauty.
@@tomh6183 very b nnn nmnnm nnnnnnnmmmmmmmmm. ‘. M m mj
6!66!
Also because of the mining heritage there’s amazing food brought over from Cornish and Finnish miners 🤤
Like industrial metals in the ground and water,flint doesn't have a sharp edge.,but education for poor youth about growing and eating healthy vegetables,in some places effected by industrial hazards,offsets some toxic effects left behind in the ground
Grew up in Fond du Lac Country for most of my childhood, and we used to find copper fish hooks, stone arrowheads and other things that we would photograph and mark and report to the Historical Society. Growing up on the “41 Corridor” you saw a lot of missed and heavily under documented artifacts and sites. You’d have a friend who’s grandpa had a farm with a burial mound on it that you’d walk and find countless things on - just kicked around like it was nothing. I wish more people valued artifacts like I and my family did.
I'm blessed to have a farm I can hunt on the east shore of rush lake and the area is rich in native american culture. I found a copper knife the other day metal detecting in the woods. I'm stoked to explore more.....
Alaskan natives also used metallic copper from the Copper River/Wrangell Mtns to make tools and trade goods. The University of Alaska Fairbanks has a fantastic copper nugget in their museum that weighs over 5,000 lbs. Prospectors found a nugget weighing over 3 tons.
There it is. Someone who knows.
Alaskan Native where trading with the Ainou of Japan.
Now that's a big nuggie!
I am a man of Mesoamerican extraction. The Maya area to be precise. One of the things that is seldom told because of all the excitement surrounding gold is it the native people of that region valued copper more than they valued gold and silver. Gold and silver were something for the gods. Copper could be used in every day life. That and obsidian were exceedingly valuable raw materials. So, this vid delights me but, it does not surprise me.
It's the same in most ancient cultures. The native hawaiians prized iron over gold and I've heard that the ancient mesopotamian were the same. People arent idiotd and prefer practical tools to shiny soft baubles
@@arthas640 exactly so. 👏🏼👍🏼
Wise. The Late Western Romans and Dark Age Europeans stopped using gold as money. Currency must be stable to work. Gold mining took incredible deep-mine engineering...and barbarian disruptions made production erratic (to say the least.) Gold became decorative - used in churches, on books as gold leaf, and even on clothing. Silver became the currency. (It's common and easy to work with.)
During Viking times, when iron mining was disrupted...iron was more valuable than silver. There was no such thing as throwing away broken iron tools. Its literal, that plows became swords, and vice versa. Silver was nice - but you needed iron to defend it.
"I am a man of Mesoamerican extraction." You were Cloned?
Subbed. What an age we live in, where single people or small teams can produce content that's more informative and interesting than many professionally produced documentaries.
Thank you!
I live in the area of pure copper, I have raw worked copper, I have found arrowheads, Copper Culture State Park in Oconto WI is right down the road from me. After Copperfest in early June, on Saturday, generally many of the collectors of Indian artifacts from the area, meet at the Copper Culture park, set up tables and show their collections to the public. I don’t know how the pandemic might mess this up…but it might return this June.
Archeologists say that most of the copper tools that were actually used were found in Wisconsin and in two layers. The first layer was buried under a lot of soil that didn't show any evidence of human habitation until the top layer where they found mainly copper fish hooks and awls along with broken flint arrow heads. They figured a mega-drought had set in which put the copper trade out of business since the tribes abandoned the area for a very long time and beaten copper objects stopped appearing in the upper levels of the burial mounds. Once those with the skills returned, then they only made the items that the regional tribes were willing to trade for.
This one made me miss Michigan. I remember as a kid picking up rocks (clay?) containing small chunks of copper in the Keweenaw Peninsula. There was so much of it, just on the surface. In later years, taking my own kids up there, finding copper didn't seem so easy. Thanks for such a detailed look!
You're welcome! This makes me miss the Great Lakes too. The Upper Peninsula is a gorgeous area.
My friends and I used to vacation in the U.P. of Michigan. I have driven through all of the abandoned copper mine towns and even in some of the mines themselves, very haunting.
How does this channel only have around 10k subs? What a nice discovery on my first free weekend in awhile.
I'm sure it will be over 100k within one year
The inflation of population numbers and unwarranted promotion of the relative level of civilization achieved by cultures in the western hemisphere has made this entire field rather suspect in the eyes of historians and archaeologists of Old World cultures. It's not this channel creator's fault, it's just that his entire discipline is considered more than a little dubious by most other professionals. And the motivation for all this seems obvious, so those working in more established branches of history and archaeology don't want to be associated with it.
many times the natives did not even have to dig for copper. The largest piece of native copper in the world was found on a river bank in the upper peninsula of michigan, just a couple miles from where I grew up. the piece must have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years, as there were visible chunks taken out of it. even nowadays you can walk through the woods, pick up a rock, and itll be ridiculously heavy due to the amount of copper in it. you can also stuble upon weird deep holes in the ground where natives dug for copper thousands of years ago. not many people live in this area so maybe thats the reason we've never had any archeological digs. people tend to forget this whole area exists.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
There were ancient vertical shafts with wood cribbing placed under copper to lift giant native copper pieces found on Isle Royale. The cribbing and copper were still there discovered by early explorers.
What?! I dont understand how ive never heard of any of this.
I was told no cribbing technology...I know n.e. Wisconsin better...cribbing is not simple , and slightly counter intuitive...do you have extraordinary proofs ?... I do hate to ask...see yaz!
@@tomg3290 I cannot remember where I read it. Perhaps it was in Superior Heartland by Fred Rydholm. I remember there was a copy of an original drawing of the cribbing with the article.
Thank you for this, I grew up within spitting distance of those copper mines near the Great Lakes, and learned NOTHING about them in school. Ever since, I've read whatever book or watched whatever video I see about it.
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a giant copper ingot mined from the area, and I love that they're very similar to the metal ingots produced in the Middle East - roughly rectangular, with 'handles' on the corners. Some things are universal. (No I don't think aliens taught them; I think most humans solve the same problem the same way. Haha.)
Oh my…. This is what RUclips (or the internet) is all about! I’ve learned as much about the Ancient Americas in the last 13 minutes as I have in all of my schooling combined. Just unreal dude. Thank you. Now, I’m going back in for the remaining 15 minutes of this one video. Of course, I’ll smash that like and subscribe as well as check out your other videos. Well done.
Thank you!
i love how you consistently paint a positive picture of the indigenous people-we were inquisitive and economical, we made rational decisions based on the specific economic realities of our time, I appreciate that you made that clear. Also I thought of a decent analogy for the shift from utilitarian to decorative/symbolic use of a cooper-diamonds-although we could mine them for tools, and they do make great tools-it's kind of overkill, we like them bc they're pretty :-)
Thank you!
“We” 😂
@@zebdawson3687 you don't like diamonds?
I received my bachelor's degree in the History of the Americas and I love your channel, keep it up
Thank you!
@Greg N, holding a Masters degree in History, i am ashamed I did not know this, but then again i am a product of the US k-12 school system, and the only thing we learned about Native American cultures was virtually nothing. Sure we learned about crops, thanksgiving and a little on Native American removal, but as far as everyday life we learned nothing. Thanks for the information, it gives me a starting point to research this topic. Just googled "first instance of copper smelting" and they came back with Serbia in around 5500 BC making them the first known users of copper , your info states this group of people started smelting copper 8500BC, is your information well known in the field metallurgy, if its not maybe you should contact the peer reviewed media to have them update their info?
@@mikeaskme3530 Thank you! And to clear up some confusion, copper working and copper smelting are different things. Copper was never smelted in Eastern North America. It was only cold hammered. You'll see that the dates for copper working go much further back than copper smelting. I hope that clarifies things a bit.
@@AncientAmericas it clears it up, i am not that versed in metallurgy, but would it still place North Americans natives the first to work with copper though? In any case, i guess we can say today that ideals of working with metal, may have been a multiregional discovery process, no? Kind of like with West Africans and their metal working process, some steps that were taken in other parts of the world, are not present in the history of West Africans working with metals, showing a multi-regional discovery, working with mineral ores. In any case it is fascinating that this is getting the recognition it deserves.
Wonderful video. I was born in 1933, in an Arizona copper mining town. My dad and 2 uncles were exempted from being soldiers during WW2 because the Nation needed skilled miners more than soldiers. I wish the video had covered copper mines of the western US.
I believe all copper mines in AZ are mainly sulfide and porphyry types. So they are not in large enough concentrations to work into objects.
My brother found an artifact cache that consisted of several extremely nice chert blades, red ochre, and a copper tablet. Apparently only one other copper tablet was known to exist in North America at the time.
Was the tablet ever examined? What script was uaed? Was the tablet ever translated?
@@TheLastNameR I couldn't tell you. It was sold to one of the most well-known Native American artifact collectors/experts on the planet. He passed away several years after the sale, so I don't know what came of it.
In the Tallahassee natural history museum there is a copper tomahawk on display and states it was probably a barter item to symbol a hierarchy because the metal is rather useless. They managed to retrace the origin and are certain it came from lake superior.
That being said, that tomahawk got passed around for no telling how long until it ended up at a dig site in Florida.
Very interesting! Thank you! My grandparents had a cabin in the UP & were avid Rockhounds & Lapidarists. We used to have to take a ferry boat across from the lower peninsula. The Chief Wawatum. They often walked the beaches of the Keweenaw for Agates & Thompsonites.
I have a nice big chunk of native copper grand dad gave me 60 years ago. There was a tavern near Calumet that would accept nice copper specimens from the locals in trade for libations. The piece I have was purchased there. I've been down in the Arcadian mine several times back then.
Copper is cool.
Sitting on a high bluff above the Rio Grande river, talking with someone, I was idly sifting soil from a little dry rivulet. I located hundreds of chips (1/8”) of abalone, coral, turquoise, and a white, pretty stone. As the location was not only pleasant, but located so someone sitting there had a long-distance view in all directions, it seems it was either a great place to trade for goods from elsewhere, or work there while keeping a lookout for whatever needed looking out for. The location was several hundred miles from the source of the turquoise, and up to two thousand miles from a couple of the others.
I would speculate that the decline in copper tool use may have been a result of thousands of years of native copper gathering: They used up nearly all the highly pure, easy to find, easy-to-get-to surface deposits of native copper or simply mineable native copper. In effect, the source material may have just become scarce. It isn't exactly easy to find this stuff, even nowadays with modern methods, just lying on the surface or available in outcroppings. We managed to do this with gold in the U.S. during the gold rushes: at first it was easy to find, with people even commenting you could dig up gold "like digging potatoes" in some places, or pluck nuggets from streams as easily as gathering shells on the beach. But rather soon, all the easy pickings were stripped and it was no longer readily available. Other peoples around the globe resorted to hard-rock mining and smelting of large quantities of non-native ore to continue obtaining metals, but North American natives never seem to have resorted to that. Why? That's a whole other story...
They did with the gold and silver. As we know, the Spanish made off with many boatloads of it .
@@snowmiaow That's a bit more complicated. The gold they had was largely placer gold from surface deposits. They did little mining, and it wasn't used for tools because it was soft, only for decorative or religious objects. So no, they didn't have large-scale gold mining (Although the Spanish did force them to mine gold as slave labor after conquering them on occasion). It just wasn't something they did. At least not until post-European contact, when some decided to do it because they could trade it to Europeans for lots of high-value goods. So no, the Aztecs, Incas, Maya, etc... only hunted for gold and gems in surface deposits, and didn't do hard-rock mining except on very rare occasions pre-contact.
So why did they seem to have so much gold, which we know the Spanish plundered from them? Because there had been a LOT found there on the surface over many generations and it built up, because gold doesn't rust away and wasn't used for tools and so didn't wear down to dust. Whatever they found just kind-of stayed in the royal families and got stockpiled for generations. The Spanish also identified areas where the natives knew gold was, then forced them to mine it, and other precious metals and gems, and so many tons of these materials were quickly mined out from the easy deposits the natives knew of, but did not industrial-scale mine themselves until forced by their conquerors.
a couple years ago i saw some incredibly gorgeous examples of mississipian copper working in the st louis art museum and ive been kinda obsessed since
A few years ago I read about a very early archaic burial of young female in northern Minnesota, she was buried with a conch shell knife with Caribbean origin.
I do not remember where I read it unfortunately. But I believe the location was near the ash river mouth.
I’m amazed that trade could go that far, 7,000 years ago.
Nick, I've always found it interesting that we modern folks, think of ancients as being somehow less than ourselves. They were the same as us.....intelligent, inventive, and always seeking resources and knowledge. And, they were more driven than most modern people. They were used to working hard to survive. The local market was the forest and fields, with no easy or speedy transportation, and alive with things that saw them as a meal. And, they had thousands of generations of knowledge and tradition to follow and build on. Most moderns can't imagine people from the previous generation having anything on them, let alone those of a thousand years ago. We're spoiled....and it could be ourdownfall, if we aren't careful. Have a good day sir.
Watching this only days after I have seen that one of best preserved fundaments of pre-war buildings near our summer house is being destroyed because they are building more summer houses in the area 😢 I am still depressed, so many memories of that place
Let me know what others can do to stop this erasure of history
Been there man it really sucks to see a historical building get knocked down.
@@rs5536 nothing, I think. Especially if you are not where I am from. But people here don't care 😑 they think it is not old enough to be considered history. Even though several decades more, and it probably will be. But there are much more ancient and valuable historical buildings destroyed by time and our politicians' greed in my region, and noone who can do anything, cares, and people who care cannot do anything
I remember trying to write a fantasy setting in a parallel Earth (involving multiverse-type stuff), and wanted to place a Bronze Age civilization somewhere on the Americas. As it turned out, the Great Lakes area was pretty much the only feasible location, after looking at various maps of copper and tin deposits in North America, as it was the only region where the two metals could be found in any sort of close proximity.
Pretty much anywhere else that one metal was found was too far from the nearest source of the other metal to be reliably traded for significant Bronze production. Of course, in our timeline, it doesn't seem the Natives bothered alloying copper with tin, because the ready-made state of native copper meant that they would have never needed to use tin in the first place.
Ironic that the most suitable place in the Americas for a Bronze Age Civilization to arise never had a need to develop Bronze in the first place.
Doesn't Alaska have both? AS well as gold, silver, and lead? It's probably unsuitable because of the climate.
The Incas and their neighbors had developed bronze smelting before European contact.
@@kovona I did say North America, but yeah, there's the Inca too.
@@109Rage And the western Mesoamericans, southern Colombians.
and bear in mind its not the 'inca'. Bronze smelting had existed for centuries before the Inca Empire even existed.
@@heremapping4484 Yeah, sorry. "The Inca" is just the default when I think of Pre-Columbian Peruvian civilization.
Some stone, like obsidian is actually much sharper than your average modern knife. Definitely superior to copper, so it's not surprising that they ended up using copper for more decorative things.
I'm just going to say the same thing as EVERYONE: great job. The number 1 thing I like about a channel is the narrator's voice because no matter how interesting a subject there are such irritating narrator's. So thanks for that and the subject matter. I recently found out I'm 35% native American and you have the best channel I've seen lately. I'll sign up and hope you get more subscribers.
Thank you! I'm flattered. Congratulations on discovering your native heritage! I'd encourage you to explore and learn as much as you can about it.
@@AncientAmericas right on. I'm mostly yaqui but I'm in mt Shasta now exploring my modoc roots. If you can find anything interesting enough to make a decent show about us that would be priceless. Mt Shasta supposedly was a holy gathering place of the tribes .thanks
I remember learning about stuff like this in 8th grade US history. It’s crazy that there was even use of native iron in the Pacific Northwest.
One thing too I wanted to mention: in school our jewelry-making instructor wouldn’t let us use copper because it was so much more difficult to work with than silver or nickel. It has a higher melting point, it’s harder when solid, so difficult to hammer or grind, and a pain to cut with a jewelry saw, because it kind of shreds, and catches on the teeth of the blade. He said it wasn’t worth the savings to give beginners a more difficult metal to work. Later I took a sculpture class in which we worked with bronze, using the lost wax method of casting. The molded piece would have ragged edges that needed removed or polished and I can attest to the material’s unmalleable nature. Probably quite a lot like copper.
Back in the early 1900’s the family farm in Wayne County, Ohio was a treasure trove of Indian arrowheads. My understanding is that a family member found a copper bowl among the many Indian artifacts in the fields at that time.
I'm just discovering your channel. You're doing a really good job with these. I appreciate all the detail. Would you consider doing a video on the people's of the pacific northwest? I love exploring cultures, and our locals have some pretty fascinating traditions and stories that may pique your interest.
Thanks again for the quality work that you're putting in. Good luck with your future efforts.
Thank you. And yes, at some point, I'd like to cover the Pacific Northwestern cultures and people.
This kind of sounds mostly coming from western archeologists and historians. I belong to one of the Michigan first nations and copper has a religious and cultural importance to us. Copper just isn't a mineral that we use for just anything, it often is used in religious ceremony and for our eating/drinking utensils because the belief that it purifies food and water as an anti-bacterial. I know of one elder that has a drum fastened with copper straps and studs that have been in his family for 15 generations. It is also important to note that the Anishinaabe (the first nations tribes of this area) were known to be traders, Michigan and Grand Rapids (a city in Michigan) were the trade capitals of the Americas. There is evidence shown that the Anishinaabe traded as far south as South America, copper has been found down there as well as things like certain shells found in our burial mounds in the midwest/Canada. Those shells also have a religious meaning to us and have been used in ceremony and art, and are only from a certain area in Mexico.
I have noticed that those who invent a technology never worship it.
Crazy to think someone may have been alive at a time when he saw his edged tools change from copper to steel. Imagine what a giant leap in performance that must have felt like.
Imagine the erosive destruction from melting two mile thick ice in only several thousand years. Humans moving back into thawed areas must have seen some crazy landscapes
Grandpa, why is there a giant lake here?
@@AncientAmericas Right, and then the next month it's gone
You nailed the patreon idea!, visible, not invasive, just perfect. Great intro btw.
Please make a video of the southern tip of America i live there, in Chile!
Thanks! I thought it was a good idea as well.
I am always on the lookout for great historical/archeological content on RUclips and this is honestly such an amazing channel. Thanks for all the hard work I know these videos must take. The research and quality of the videos are great! 10 out of 10
Thank you!
WOW.. I hope you are not serious.. why dont you check out a Jon Levi video and see if you still think this is a 10 out of 10.. I mean there is just no deep dives or any personal insight.. he is just blindly trusting some people and blindly disagreeing with others based on some political ideology or some personal agenda. With an truly open mind and using logic and reason this video could have been spectacular!! I agree there was some solid info, but come on we arent kids...
@@parisdegrassie1013 When I said had a lot of exposure to other historical and archeological content, I wasn't kidding. I did not not make the comparison blindly or without context. This is genuinely a great channel with the perfect amount of info to make it entertaining and educational without being a full on lecture video...which are great in small doses, but not something you can binge, like these videos. While there are others whom I would also rate a 10 out of 10, I stick to my original assessment, that this is a great channel. Also, I keep hearing political influence, but I have seen nothing but facts and unbiased conclusions being offered as evidence throughout this channel, so I have no idea what you even mean by this.
@@Sai_Srikar_Panjala Fair enough, but dont be confused and think that I said YOU were blindly agreeing with anything. I meant the creator of this video. I guess I worded my first comment wrong, and I sound pretty arrogant reading it back. But I have been on a kick of really having my mind blown about history for months, so I was just shocked to see this tickled your fancy, when there are absolutely incredible videos on this site that cover the same content, but used logic and reasoning in place of blindly agreeing with academia.. and the results are awe inspiring! Just check out
ruclips.net/video/Z_MbPtpCRNI/видео.html I think you will understand what I mean after viewing that short video. Like I said I agree that there was some good info, and I thanked the creator for taking his time to make this video, but could have been soo much more with a real open mind
I live in Mohawk, MI in the Keweenaw next to Mohawk shaft #5 collected many poor rock copper. awesome video.
Thank you!
A number of years ago I hiked part of the north coast trail of Isle Royale and came across many small marked quarries of ancient copper mining. I hiked the length of Isle Royale. On the Greenstone Trail came upon a now closed 19th century copper mining area. The area had dangerous fenced open shafts, the water in the area is poisoned, and the park has warning signs not to filter local water. The north coast trail was wet and rugged, the Greenstone Trail is a ridge trail and much easier. The trails in the southwest of Isle Royale are nice with access to a nice bay, great camping, great views, and a trail to a west coast beach to watch sunsets. I found a Greenstone while looking at the small pebbles sitting on the beach.
Real shame there wasn’t horses in the Americas before, would have been fascinating to see how the various cultures would have been
there was horses. they where just another prey animal though.
This is making me rethink something I found in Florida back in high-school or middle-school. While walking around a lake in my neighborhood I found a ~7" metal knife/spearpoint (what it looked like to my mind) in the mud. It looked like stone at first but it felt like metal so I passed it under a metal-detector which beeped. The whole thing was coated in some kind of grey oxidation that gave it a stone-like appearance. The side that had been exposed out of the mud looked like it had been beaten into shape by while the underside was more rounded and lumpy. One of its edges looked intentionally flat while the other rounded off slightly. I took it to someone at a local museum who looked very interested in it at first but then said it was probably a replica when they learned it was metal. It seemed odd to me that a large replica of a stone tool made of metal would show up randomly by a lake in my neighborhood but I took their word for it. I never did take the time to figure out what kind of metal it was made of but now I am wondering if it might be worth the time.
Copper based paints, presented in an entertaining form, were the secrets to the success of Bob Ross.
I love building stuff with sheet copper and brass I learned at a school in 1980. Just as a hobby now
Interesting. We’re all taught North American Indians didn’t have metal working so we assume it was always like that. This was long long before even “Indians” as we know them.
When discussing the decrease of copper as tools, it's important to note, that stone tools can be made sharper. And kept sharper much more easily. It seems to me oh, that once they started Trading shinies and pretties, they wouldn't have any trouble accessing good churt or even, obsidian. As you noted.
Very new to your Channel. And I am very much enjoying your content.
Thank you! It's been awhile since I did the research for this so I may be remembering this slightly wrong but I read paper by an archaeologist who did replicative studies comparing stone and copper points and while you can make a stone point much sharper, it dulls fairly quickly to the sharpness of a copper point so sharpness was likely not the big factor in why they stopped being used. It's not like you're going to make a new point for every hunting trip because that would be wasteful of imported material. Also worth mentioning, the copper points on average got deeper penetration, albeit not by much so I'm doubt that that was a factor in keeping copper either way. She speculated that once they were able to get those types of stone, it was just much more time efficient to produce tools. If you are interested, check out the bibliography in the description and read up on it. It's interesting. (At least I found it interesting.)
@@AncientAmericas Thanks, I will definitely check that out. I am surprised about the sharpness. I think that would definitely depend on the stone being used. Obsidian blades are occasionally used for extremely delicate surgeries. Because modern surgical steel, cannot be made as sharp, as obsidian. Time would certainly be a factor. A stone blade can be re-sharpened in a couple of minutes. However, copper is definitely much tougher. I will have to look at her research. Thanks again
@@pelewads that's a very good observation and I don't recall what stone they used for test. Every material is going to act differently.
I grew up in Michigan and boy howdy the copper thing is huge. It's damn cool! Loved going to the Lansing museum and they have this whole mine exhibit talking about it.
One of the interesting aspects of copper is that in high concentrations is that copper compounds acts as preservatives. One ironic find was a hafted stone-flaking tool of native copper, where the copper preserved the organic hafting. As a matter of fact, a copper arrowhead is more durable than stone, but good chert or obsidian are both vastly harder, and yield sharper edges. The use of imported stone is peculiar though. Apparently copper was valuable enough that it off set the cost of importing usable stone. As concerns why copper was never smelted by the OCT, in the Old World and in South America, metallurgy _follows_ pottery. The use of controlled high heat is necessary for pottery is critical before metal ores can be refined into metals.
Fantastic! This onetime Yooper appreciates!
Thank you!
The Hudson Bay Company, and the North West Company in Canada paid for furs from the Cree, Ojibway, Dene, Blackfoot and Metis peoples with copper kettles. The kettles could be easily reworked into a hundred different items, and in the meantime could be used for food storage.... or for that matter as kettles. This continued until the mid 19th century.
There is only one easily accessible source of tin in the Americas, and that's in Mexico. Mexican metallurgists did develop bronze as a luxury product. But there would never have been enough tin available to produce the kind of Bronze Age revolution that occurred in China and the Middle East. Even in the old world, it was the availability of tin that determined if bronze could be made cost-effectively, and that metal was traded over enormous distances ---- with Phoenician ships regularly sailing to Britain to get the product of the Cornish tin mines.
For sure. I'm sure that copper was very appreciated but it wouldn't explain all the copper that had been in burials for thousands of years.
You can actually make bronze with other metals besides tin. Arsenic was used to make bronze in many parts of the world where tin wasn't available.
@@AncientAmericas My point was that tin was in limited supply in the new world. Mexico's bronzes were perfectly good tin-based bronzes, because they had a supply of tin, but not a big supply. South America had tin-based bronzes in the mid-north (Ecuador, northern Peru) and arsenical bronzes in the mid-south (Bolivia, Argentina) because it had modest supplies of tin and somewhat better supplies of arsenical copper ores. Neither resource was on the scale available to the Old World. This seems to be why what became a large scale utility product in Eurasia remained a luxury product in the Americas. The basic crops (maize in North America and potatoes in South America) were "gardened" in a manner that did not especially benefit from metal tools and plows, so there would not have been the spur to use it outside the upper classes that you find with Old World crops like wheat and barley, which grow best where a strong plow is needed to break sod. Cheap bronze revolutionized every aspect of Old World life, and led to a similar and even greater transformation with cheaper and still more plentiful iron. Tin-based, arsenical and combinations of the two all had different advantages and disadvantages for different products. But the fantastic cheapness of iron, with its widespread sources of ore (the Scandinavians did quite well with bog iron), and great strength, ensured that it would take the lead when the way to produce it was discovered. In North America, the really big source of copper, the Great Lakes region, was very far away from Mexico's tin sources. Combine all these factors, and you get less of an emphasis on metallurgy in the New World beyond shaping raw copper.
My mention of the copper kettles in northern Canada was not intended to "explain" anything about ancient burials in mounds! The use of copper doesn't need any special explanation --- its utility is self-evident. I was merely making an observation that copper remained an important trade item to Canadian First Nations well into modern times. It is similar to saying that modern Canadians still enjoy a lot of maple syrup today, though its use dates back into the mists of time. (In fact, just an hour ago I had a maple donut from Tim Horton's, like a good Canadian).-
@@philpaine3068 All cultures quite naturally use what's plentiful in their region and figure out how to make the most of it. I'm chuckling now because as I was reading your posts I was thinking, "right, you don't see a history of maple syrup in areas that simply don't have maple trees" ... and sure enough, you mentioned maple syrup. ;)
@@dogslobbergardens6606 The province of Quebec maintains a Fort Knox-type emergency stockpile of 39 million pounds of maple syrup, known as the Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve ---- which shows you just how seriously Canadians take their syrup. The global economy may collapse, a meteor may wipe out half of civilization, but our pancakes, donuts, and creme cookies will still have their sacred sweetness.
@@philpaine3068 I grew up in WI where we feel our maple syrup is at least equal to if not better than Canadians'... but let's not get into a rivalry ;)
I know there was so much going on in America that I am happy to learn some today from you.
I found an old copper culture spear head metal detecting in eastern Massachusetts. That spearhead definitely has a crazy story !
Was that decorative bird a cuprous hawk?
Ba-dum-tiss!
This is a topic I know very little of, so this video is awesome. It would be awesome to see more about North American civilizations.
He plugged my channel in the description. Give it a look. North American cultures are my entire subject matter.
What he said.
It's so strange that 1900's archaeology ignored the u.s. there's so much here!
@@aaronmccullough2605 it didn't though. There were massive excavations conducted during the Works Progress Administration, and all that work was published in the 50s (ish). The whole discipline was professionalized in the 60's when archaeological preservation law was put in place, then the TVA did a ton of work here when all the reservoirs were being done back in the 70's and 80's. We've really been doing quite a bit of archaeology here since the 1920s.
@@NathanaelFosaaen I'm just saying that In general, most people haven't heard of a majority of it
Wow, this completely changed my understanding of ancient American cultures. I knew they had metalworking but I was shocked to learn that there was trade which ultimately moved goods over such long distances.
A massive portion of NA used a documented sign-language to support these activities. If it wasn't for the apparent mega-drought cycle, and maybe the lack of plentiful & desirable pack animals (deer seem to almost never be treated as subjects of domestication, and it's seemingly a minor miracle that cattle were domesticated at all), there probably would have been _much_ more development than actually happened.
There are flint extraction sites in North Texas (the Alibates Flint Quarries) whose colorful and high-quality flint has been found all over North America. I wouldn’t be surprised if Alibates Flint was traded for Keeweenaw Copper
Trade is eternal.
Obsidian was traded all over the country from west coast sources. We found an artifact in Kansas that was an unworked core
@@MrBottlecapBill THE COPPER MUST FLOW
I am a metal shaper and do the exact same thing with non ferrous metals. When I shape copper, bronze or aluminum they work harden and will end up cracking. So during my work, I will cover the metal with carbon from the acetylene torch and then use a hit neutral flame to burn the carbon off and the panels is soft again so that I can keep shrinking and stretching the panel into shape. I make car bodies from flat sheets of metals.
I'm a metal detectorist and while I do agree that taking an artifact (copper in this case) from it's original location does loose it's context and provenance . (unless you keep the gps location and pictures and report it) It is also true that if it were not for farmers or detectorist etc most of these items would probably not be found at all and further decay and corrode in the ground until their is little to nothing left of the object. From my experience as a numismatist and finding copper coins both old and new in the ground is that copper does not do as well as you would think long term in the ground. It largely depends on the soil and moisture content. Even modern pennies from the 70's you can find the beginnings of corrosion. I found an 1826 Large copper one cent (Rowley, Massachusetts) that was virtually unrecognizable until I cleaned it up with some soap and water and toothbrush, then by looking at it under certain light with magnification I could make out just enough features to identify it. In contrast silver does extremely well in the ground from the silver coins I have found. An 1841 seated liberty dime I found at the same location as the large copper cent had deep tone/tarnish but only minor pin prick size pitting.
There is a revolutionary era prison in Connecticut that was located in an old copper mine...its still there as a museum I think...makes you wonder if the indigenous people knew about the copper source before the Europeans came
How common was tin in the Old Copper Culture? Bronze requires both copper and tin.
Although it is entirely possible that the creative and intelligent indigenous Americans simply did not have the lucky observation that combining copper and tin creates a harder metal (bronze), I have to wonder if maybe a lack of access large quantities of tin played a role.
My understanding is that one of the primary reasons why the bronze age took off on the Afro-Eurasian land mass was due to the creation of trade networks that enabled access to tin across a wide geographical area, enabling the spread of bronze working technology.
Without the ability to transform copper, an incredibly soft and ductile metal, into bronze, there is no reason to abandon lithic technology.
I'm honestly not sure. You can use other metals to make bronze though and even more metals to make other copper alloys. You'll see in south america that once people figure out how to smelt metal, they start making all sorts of alloys but it still takes a little while to get to bronze.
@@AncientAmericas Excellent points. I did not think about other copper alloys. Do you know whether these alloys offer similar advantages over lithic tech that traditional bronze would?
I find the mystery of why indigenous Americans did not go the route of a bronze age to be highly intriguing. I know that going toward a bronze age is not an inevitability and would depend on a larger context that I, as an amateur, do not yet fully understand. That said, indigenous Americans were clearly resourceful and intelligent enough to pursue a bronze age if the right conditions were in place. The fact that copper alloys were available in some cultures makes this question even more fascinating to me.
Thanks and keep up the great work!
@@MrManifolder The Inca do figure out bronze prior to contact. As to other copper alloys, I'm not aware of any being used for tools. The ones I've seen have been used in ornaments and personal adornment but I could be wrong.
@@AncientAmericas I didn't realize the Inca went that route. Very interesting. Thanks!
I've heard rumors that there might be evidence of possible trade contacts between South Americans and Polynesians. Do you think there is enough to possibly address it in a future video or do you think our knowledge of such contact still inconclusive?
@@MrManifolder also having seen a bunch of history/archaeology channels on RUclips trying to replicate ancient bronze smelting, it isn't just chucking a bunch of copper and tin ore in to a pit and bam bronze. You have to get decent quality of ore especially tin ore to stand a good chance of getting usable bronze out of the process, along with good temperature control.
🤯 I had never heard anything about any of this before! What a fascinating subject, and what a truly professional style of presentation. If you taught college courses I'd enroll in every class. LOVE this channel! Thanks so much for your work! 👏👏
Thank you!
I have a cool, very small copper ring with an interesting design on it from upper Peninsula Michigan. Another interesting point is that in the early 1900s, they dug up the mound in North Georgia, and it had an ancient copper ax traced to Michigan copper. Interesting, unknown history. My ring had to be a kid's ring, a princess most likely....??? In the end, America went away from copper due to the huge amount of work and resources it took to smelt and work copper. Flint, Chert or whatever is so easy to make a razor sharp tool from. It is also interesting that mainstream history says the copper age was from 4,000 BC. America's copper age predates this by about 1,000 years!!! History needs to be updated!
Finding celtic artefacts in the western hemisphere IS ITS OWN ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT!!!!!
Sure, but archaeologists would argue that those contexts suggest that they are recent arrivals not ancient leftovers. You're certainly free to disagree with their conclusions.
this is awesome! you gotta do one on the Calusa! or Floridas first peoples! They are the most underated kingdoms in the americas! they defeated the conquistadors for 200 years!
The Calusa are on my to-do list! (For someday at least.) Not to worry!
@@AncientAmericas you could add to that video a section on those florida bog bodies.
I love the insight into the Americans these videos give me!!! I've been looking for so long a good video series to learn about pre-Columbian American cultures that isn't degrading!!! Love these!!!!!!
Thank you!
I recently discovered your channel, and happy to see it exists. I've always wanted to do something like this myself.
One thing that stands out to me in this video though is that you mention that the Old Copper complex didn't have any shaft mines. I remember Whittlesey discussing some in "Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior" (the first - my knowledge - major scholarly work on what would later be called the Old Copper Complex). I'll have to pick up Martin's "Wonderful Power" from my university library again to see if she discusses them there as well - off hand, I can't remember. In any case, even the deepest of these shafts were no more than 6 meters, so probably weren't what you were thinking of when discussing deep excavation.
Thanks! I read that book cover to cover and I don't recall any shaft mining being discussed. That said, the book is over 20 years old and there may be new evidence.
@@AncientAmericas To be fair, Whittlesey's book is more than 150 years old so it might be more likely that the shafts he discusses were later found to not be associated with the Old Copper Complex. He was, after all, writing in the early days of formal American archaeology. I spent some time this afternoon trying to track down some additional information on the sites he mentions so see what follow-up studies in the last century and a half have turned up, but haven't tracked anything down yet.
Very interesting material! The comments are most informative. Ancient Americas does a nice job.
Thank you!
This feels almost like a weird strategy game scenario. "They rushed their research points to skip from the ice age straight to the copper age while the other players were still in the stone age."
Someone rushed the copper working tech so they could monopolize the copper trade early on.
WOOHOO WISCONSIN EPISODE.
Fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing. I almost wish I had a metal detector, but if I come across anyone with one, I'll give them the lowdown on preserving context
Wooohoooo!!!
Can't believe I just found this channel! I just bingewatched practically everything you've done. It's really amazing stuff. And from a fellow Wisconsinite no less! If you're ever out in the Driftless Region and want to go digging, hit me up.
Thank you! Although I must confess that I'm not a Wisconsinite. I have family up in the UP so I drive through it when I visit them.
@@AncientAmericas Still counts!
Damn! I'm from the Keweenaw and used to drive that route to Milwaukee all the time! Never knew about the sites.
I know right?!
Fascinating
One thing you missed when talking about European skepticism on native copper working, is that they saw the natives using European iron and steel and making that into their own goods. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to just assume that they did the same with copper. Especially since not much copper mining was done by the time they arrived.
That is true. There are many accounts of indigenous peoples working iron and I'm sure some European copper probably got reworked as well. However, it's important to keep in mind that those theories were being used to explain native copper sources around the turn of the 20th century. By then, archaeology had been going on for decades in the US and plenty of ancient burials had been found with copper artifacts. Not only that Europeans had begun mining in the Keweenaw and there are accounts of them finding traces of ancient mining. The evidence was clearly there and had been pointed out by many archaeologists.
Unfortunately, many of those scholars were sticking their heads in the sand. That skepticism is understandable in the 1600's. By 1900, it's much harder to defend it.
I love that everytime i look up something I want to learn about on RUclips it seems that someone recently uploaded something about it, I hope it never ends
As a Michigander myself I loved this
Thank you!
When my dad was a kid he got to help some archaeologists dig up a old Indian village along the Missouri River in South Dakota before they flooded the valley to build a lake. They found a copper or brass buckle .they let my dad have it because the site was to old to have copper artifacts.and didn’t want it to mess with there data .Or it didn’t fit with there timeline .You can still see the rings from the tree that they carved the starburst shape into .Then poured the Metal onto to make it on the back of it .My dad always believed it was a Native American artifacts that belong with the other artifacts at the site.
I don't understand why they flooded so many sites like that. What were they trying to hide?
I stopped at the Oconto site last year after decades of driving by, saying I was going to stop someday.
Funny you mention that because I was there a few days ago!
This video just showed up as a suggestion today for me and I'm so glad it did! This video is fantastic and it answers some questions about indigineous American culture that I didn't even begin to know how to ask. Looking forward to much more from you, you've definitely earned another subscriber!
Thank you!
Bronze usually consists of copper allied with tin, zinc or even lead. Since the copper in the Wisconsin/Michigan region was pure copper and not ore, there was no requirement to smelt it. The native American metal workers didn't need to melt it-just pull copper nodules out of the ground and cold work them to shape-there was no possibility of 'discovering' bronze by melting the copper and adding alloy elements. Copper in Europe and the middle east was mainly ore and needed to be smelted to produce metal. They stumbled on the discovery that adding things like tin, zinc, lead, arsenic, etc. to molten copper gave it strength and improved properties. You have to wonder what might have transpired if native American metal workers had discovered bronze? There are tin deposits in Zacatecas, Mexico, so all the ingredients for high quality bronze were there.
You probably meant natives in northamerica but the incas had bronze weapons and helmets.
Bronze is copper and tin. Brass is copper and zinc.
@@KuroiGodofDeath Inca and the Sican cultures of south America had Arsenic Copper, but not classic bronze. Bronze is an alloy of copper and primarily tin. As Desmond Murphy noted, Brass is an alloy of Zinc and Copper. Arsenic copper usually has arsenic trace alloy within the copper metal as mined, it's not added to melted copper as an intended alloy element. Arsenic copper has improved properties over pure copper, but it isn't really a bronze because no tin is present.
Reminds me of the meteorites that natives found in northern canada and greenland. BIG meteors like the the cape york that weigh many tons, even tens of tons. The natives around these meteors would chip off bits of the high nickel iron that composed them, and cold forged these fragments into small tools and edges for their weapons.
Great topic! I’m endlessly fascinated with Paleolithic Science.
I would add that we have a collection of Mammoth kill sites here in Arizona that have dated to 15,000 years. In addition there are the fossil footprints found in White Sands National Park in New Mexico.
The discoverers initially dated them to 25,000 years. They have since retracted that date due to pressure from the scientific community..
It’s interesting how the established “period” is not allowed to shift and if it does, Academics are fast to jump all over it and declare it incorrect.
That's kinda funny because there's been really compelling archaeology from the past few years that pushed back habitation in the US thousands of years back.
If you follow the story of the Paleolithic Footprints you’ll watch the dates change from older to younger. It’s really strange..
I believe this continent has been inhabited for at least the 25 to 30 thousand year period.
As you rightly pointed out the sea levels were lower and obviously there may be hundreds of Paleolithic sites along the coast we will never know about.
What is your reference for a copper arrowhead performing better than one fashioned from obsidian or chert?
The stone tips are significantly sharper than whatever you could hope to achieve with a soft metal like copper (a properly knapped flint edge is surgically sharp and all arrows ideally kill by hemmoraging)
additionally, the soft nature of copper makes it really inferior to stone as an arrow head because it will very likely bend or curl if striking anything other than soft tissue and even then it might.
Check out my bibliography in the description. Specifically, look at the work by Michelle Bebber. She's done replicative experiments with copper and stone points. Copper points actually perform slightly better in most cases and they work really well. The data is all in the article. The downside is that they require a lot more time and energy to make.
@@AncientAmericas from her page: "We experimentally confirmed that replica copper tools are inferior to stone ones when each is sourced in the same manner as their archaeological counterparts and subjected to identical tasks."
Copper in pure form would be far inferior to chert or obsidian for arrow tips in several ways:
a. in time to manufacture (arrows are, in large part) consumables. you end up losing a lot of them.
b. in duability (ruclips.net/video/7qiqmzZk0j0/видео.html) penetration test against steel, but it's on a real cadaver deer.
c. and in lethality (a stone point is orders of magnitude sharper than one of copper, remember it's hemmoraging that brings the animal down, not the presence of a hole in its body cavity)
d. There's also the high probably that a relatively pure copper point, being soft, would bend or curl on impact and deflect the path of the arrow, limiting penetration and hence lethality. I've experienced this phenomenon with Stainless steel broadheads and they are orders of magnitude stiffer than copper.
It's apparent, that without the transition to a stronger alloy (bronze), the tribes realized their copper was best utilized (highest value) for trading as jewlery for superior stone points used in hunting or at least the materials to make such points on their own as well as other specialized goods and trade items.
@@stankfaust814 Cool video! I only had her research when I was writing this up but I wish I'd been able to see that. Out of curiosity, did you read her work end to end? She goes into further detail about her methodology and the results. According to her experiments, copper fails because its more difficult to source and craft, not so much because of shortcomings with its performance. To be fair, her methods are different than those in the video so we aren't exactly comparing apples to apples.
The earliest mention by Europeans of the copper from the Great Lakes is probably by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who was marooned on the coast of Florida in the 1520s, and walked west to what is now Texas before being rescued... At one point in his narrations he mentions the fine jewelry made of the northern copper...
I love that you put your sources in the description. That’s dope man
Thanks! I want the make sure anyone can read up on this if they want.
Copper is so easy to find there. It's often found in big ol half pound chunks just laying on the ground. It's pretty insane.
Unfortunately my first exposure to this topic was a "documentary" on discovery or the history channel claiming that Phoenicians settler there because of the copper some 3000 years ago, silly as that is
That's unfortunate.
@@AncientAmericas Not really. There's no debate that the Phoenicians brought in tin from the British Isles. There were sources of copper in the Mediterranean, but tin was very limited. While there wouldn't be a need for copper, the Phoenicians were an extremely capable maritime culture and we shouldn't ignore the possibility of trans-Atlantic trade.
In fact, there is a great deal of evidence for it. Egyptian mummies were found to have used cocaine and tobacco - both products of the Americas. There are numerous similarities between the megalithic cultures of the old world with those of Central and South America. There would seem to have been some contact, most likely at a much older date, with a currently unknown culture.
When we look at the myths of the oldest civilizations, they all state that their knowledge and technological capability was given to them from an outside source - whom they refer to as "gods", from Thoth, to Oannes, to Quetzalcoatl. It is foolish to dismiss this a coincidence, as there are far too many examples. What we are likely dealing with is an advanced civilization, highly proficient in navigation and ship building, that travelled widely sharing their knowledge with other cultures around the globe. That is why we see the chalcolithic period beginning at roughly the same time in North America as we did in the Old World. Correlation and causality are a much more mathematically viable than coincidence, after all.
@@Shin_Lona except the Phoenicians didnt exist in the bronze age or before it invalidating all of that
@@chinogabesv650 please go read a book
@@Shin_Lona indeed there is plenty of evidence. Phoenicians, Scandinavian, Celts, Romans, Egyptian. But to openly speak of it by most today seems taboo. I live in New England. Our miles of stone walls, standing stones, stone structures, speak of other cultures that are not Native American. Within the boundaries of Quebec, Cape Cod, and Pennsylvania may peak the interest of many. Hanno the Navigator should be looked into. Happy hunting
I’m not sure I fully understand all of the context involved in the comment section and the various disagreements contained therein, but I would like to say that this video essay is very well produced and appears to be thoughtfully researched. Thank you for taking the time to create it.
Thank you!
If you want to learn more about the ancient Southwest here is a recommendation I have. I took Pre-History of the American Southwest in Pima Collage and the textbook we used was titled: Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest by Stephen Plog, Second edition. Admittedly even the teacher acknowledged it's a bit outdated so maybe check out the author's later works but is still filled with great information.
Some notable things that are outdated are: There are three main cultures categorized by archaeologists. They are the Hohokam, Mogollon and Ancient Pueblo. In the book "Ancient Pueblo" is referred as "Anasazi" but it would changed long after the book's publication because it was considered offensive by local communities.
Another thing about it being outdated is that the Mogollon and Ancient Pueblo have a lot of information while the Hohokam doesn't have a lot. That's because back then archaeologists were stuck in the fall and winter teaching so when summer rolls in its to hot to work in Arizona (where the Hohokam sites are), so instead they go to higher altitudes in New Mexico and Colorado (where the other two are). It's until recently that archaeologists are finding time. This is what my professor told me.
That class was a long time ago but I love it. One of the best classes I had, would recommend.
Hope you find this information useful.
Worry not. I've already begun reading up on the south west.
@@AncientAmericas Also the reason in Chaco Canyon no one but tribal members are allowed in the kivas is because hippies were burying crystals in the floors to "recharge" them. -_-
I come from a long line of copper mines miners starting in n Jalisco from the 1500’s up to New Mexico until my dad’s generation and everywhere inbetwen with every generation. From the biggest open copper mine in the US Morenci Arizona.
The Norwegian fur trader and writer Helge Ingstad tells us in his book: In search for the last Apache,one of his Apache guides told him about an old copper smith who knew the seecret of how to harden copper!
I like finding cool stuff, but I hate looters. It seems odd that gold and silver working from Mesoamerica never penetrated that far east when maize did.
It's sad how little most people know about how sophisticated Native Americans were. I was on a dig in my community college days in SE Kansas and we found evidence of a flint trade from Missouri. We dated it from the pottery to about 1000 years ago.
I'm almost 65, my older brother like me have been collecting Indian artifacts since we were 7 or 8. He has 3 points he calls " rat tail copper points" he found along the Kankakee River in Indiana close to Illinois 40 years ago. Also a few copper beads. Thank you for this video!!
Could have been the Pottawatomie, Sauk, or Miami tribe who were in that area----
The Northeast Forest Indians used to put white captive settlers to work hammering copper. Copper was a trade good, and I suspect the finer spear heads were bartered from Mexico. Smelting and casting were unknown to the Native Americans, except for a tribe in the Far Northwest. For cutting and weapons, flint and obsidian gave a finer cutting edge, they were also trade goods.