Michigan Copper in the Mediterranean (cont.)
By Jay Stuart Wakefield, MES & AAPF
The Miners of Michigan Copper
It is estimated that half a billion pounds
(Ref.1) of copper were mined in tens of thousands of pits on Isle
Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan by ancient miners over
a period of a thousand years. Carbon dating of wood timbers in the
pits has dated the mining to start about 2450 BC and end abruptly at
1200 BC. Officially, no one knows where the Michigan copper went. All
the “ancient copper culture”
tools that have been found could have been manufactured from just one
of the large boulders. A placard in London’s British Museum
Bronze Age axe exhibit says: “from about 2500 BC, the use of
copper, formerly limited to parts of Southern Europe, suddenly swept
through the rest of the Continent”. No one seems to know where
the copper in Europe came from.
Indian legends tell the mining was done by
fair-haired “marine men”. Along with wooden tools, and
stone hammers, a walrus-skin bag has been found (Ref.1). A huge
copper boulder was found in the bottom of a deep pit raised up on
solid oak timbers, still preserved in the anaerobic conditions for
more than 3,000 years. Some habitation sites and garden beds have
been found and studied (various ref.). It is thought that most of the
miners retired to Aztalan (near Madison, Wisconsin) and other
locations to the south at the onset of the hard winters on Lake
Superior. The mining appears to have ended overnight, as though they
had left for the day, and never came back. A petroglyph of one of
their sailing ships has been found (Fig.7).
 Click for fullsize image
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During this thousand-year period of mining, some of the miners must
have explored the continent to the west, as evidenced by strangely
large skeletons in a lot of places, such as the red-haired giants who
came by boat to Lovelock Cave on Lake Lahontan (Nevada), that were
found in 1924 with fishnets and duck decoys (Ref.77). There is
“biological tracer” evidence for foot traffic back and
forth across the continent, more that three thousand years before the
Lewis and Clark Expedition. Huber (Ref.27) describes the “remarkable”
presence of the shrub Devil’s Club on Blake Point, the northern
tip of Isle Royale, and on Passage Island, offshore, and also on
small islands around Rock Harbor, on Isle Royale. Its usual habitat
is the rainforest gullies of the conifer forests of the Pacific
Northwest. Huber claims it appears nowhere else east of the Rocky
Mountains. This plant has giant leaves, with spines underneath, and
frightfully spiny woody stems. It has a history of traditional use as
a medicine, to treat diabetes, tumors, and tuberculosis, with its
effectiveness confirmed by modern studies. It appears likely it was
carried in a medicine bag to this remote island in Lake Superior in
ancient times, and the places where the Devil’s Club are found
are showing us where the miners were using medicines.
Silver in the Copper
Pieces of the “native” Michigan
copper sometimes have crystals of silver inclusions, mechanically
enclosed but not alloyed; this is called “halfbreed
copper”. In the commercial
mines, the miners are said to have cut these silver nodules off with
knives, and take them home. The presence of silver nodules in “Old
Copper Culture” tools shows they were made by hammering, called
“cold working”.
These hammered weapons and tools found in Hopewell mounds sometimes
“show specks of silver, found only in copper of Lake Superior”
(Ref. 69). Apparently, one instance of identification by silver
inclusion has occurred overseas: In this letter of December 1st,
1995, Palden Jenkins, a historian from Glastonbury, writes, “I
met the farmer who owns the land on which a megalithic stone circle
is, called Merry Maidens, in far west Cornwall. While clearing
hedges, he discovered an arrowhead, which was sent to the British
Museum for identification. The answer returned: ‘5,000 years
old; source, Michigan, USA’.” (Ref.76).
Trace Element Analysis
The temperature of a wood fire is 900°C,
and with charcoal above 1000°C, but forced air fires are hotter,
and met the need to obtain the 1084°C melting point of copper.
The melting
of crystallized copper, and pouring it into oxhide molds (the shape
of the skin of a flayed ox) for shipping, wherever it was done, is
the first step in its contamination. Re-melting, for pouring into
tool molds, can involve the use of fluxes, fuel contamination, the
addition of used/broken tools, and the addition of arsenic or tin.
Since metals always contain small portions of
trace elements, it was thought we could follow the copper, by looking
at trace elements in copper elsewhere, to see if it matched. The six
early studies reported by Griffin (Ref.25), all report native copper
at 99.92%
copper. Rapp and others (Ref.8,53) report that using trace element
“fingerprints”, using mostly Lake Superior copper
samples, probable geographic/geologic source identification can be
done. The work of Hancock et al. (Ref.47) showed again that native
copper, including Michigan copper, showed lower levels of tin,
arsenic, gold, and especially cobalt, than “European copper”
manufactured artifacts. The British Museum reported “generally
low trace element content [in] our Egyptian artifacts” (Ref.2).
Years ago, the author collected some European copper and bronze axes,
thinking that he might do some sampling of them for some
commercially-available trace element analysis. Unfortunately, sample
testing is only useful for hammered copper
tools, not melted/cast ones. Looking
at artifacts, full of mixed contaminants in their manufacturing, has
for the most part, not been helpful. We need to look at the
least-disturbed samples, the ingot form in which copper was shipped.
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