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@@hiqhduke I would love to do that, I've had it in mind for a while. It's an incredible story - lots of parallels with the Indo-European expansion. But I'll need to do lots of research first because I don't know much about African prehistory - so it'll take me a while before I can do it.
Excellent answer for a conspiracy. With any conspiracy, I always ask, "What would be gained by successfully hiding said truth?" If nothing stands to be gained, I am less likely to believe a given conspiracy. For instance, I _do_ believe that that the US military conducts unethical experiments and might benefit by having people believe that aliens or UFOs are behind strange occurrences, particularly those that make people sick or leave lasting physical problems. I can't prove it, but it is plausible.
@@hiqhduke - If your goal is to exonerate Europeans from their dominant colonial role in the region, that's pretty shady. Often, modern conflicts in Africa have an unknown source, someone behind it - stirring up latent hostilities, in other words, using the divide and conquer tactic. Never be surprised when that turns up in the history of indigenous people losing their land. The "Lost Boys" of Sudan (I think) for instance were chased out by Africans, but why? Turns out oil sat ready for extraction. And you can be certain that Africans weren't behind the extraction goal. That would have to be China or a western nation corporation.
its a big yes , there is plenty of archaeological evidence of trans atlantic trade route during antiquity , the only problem is that it disproves the out of Africa theory so its declared to be "Pseudo"
No it's not obvious because there is a lot of evidence that copper did come from North America, it wasn't in the tonnage that was mined in let's say Crete and other places and copper was mined for a long time before that, it doesn't mean that some enterprising Minoans and others couldn't have went to great lengths and risks to become rich and powerful by traveling across the Atlantic and mining, smelting and bringing copper back home to sell or forge. To much evidence in many areas including chemical analyst on copper samples found in Crete and on a Phoenician ship wreck show that someone was indeed mining and smelting copper here in the Great Lakes region in the ancient past and shipping it to the Med.
@@etistone I know what you're saying, sometimes I wonder @ the time wasted clicking-on "why the earth isn't flat". It certainly wasn't for research! There's just something about the channel, maybe a sense of depth that transcends simple interest in a topic? I don't know, just seems to have an easygoing command over the subject without a "lecture" feel. A unique presenter.
@@Jarlemoore1 I wasn't sure to expect this, but I understand. I am 100% for questioning "concensus" views, which I don't offer as mere lip-service. But saying that does make for these uncomfortable moments. When I have to realize beforehand that engaging or ignoring all ends up at the same place. Nowhere. So let's just say I concede. Or if you prefer..."Really? I'll have to look into that"!
I think the real mystery is why widespread use of metals never took hold in the Americas. The people of North America used copper to some extent for a while and then apparently stopped using it. In South America, they apparently even smelted a limited amount of copper alloys but AFAIK it never got significant use for weapons or tools. I would think copper and bronze would confer the same advantages in the Americas as it did in Europe but apparently for some reason the Native Americans didn't think so.
Jarred Diamonds take on the question is imo flawed but does make some very strong arguments. Basically, Eurasia has a lot of places within trading distance of each other that have similar climates. This allowed agriculture to spread rapidly along the region between Spain and India, and the plains of China were large enough to be their own separate cultural center. Meanwhile the vast steppes and the Indian ocean and seasonally-reversing monsoon winds and east asian seas and island chains created lots of opportunities for less direct but still culturally significant trade. The Americas by contrast are more broken up into smaller climate regions so there is less opportunity for those kinds of extremely long distance exchange of ideas. Also, his point about nearly all the economically-useful herbivores in the Americas having been wiped out seems valid, as does African fauna being universally impossible to tame. What Diamond claims that I'm less convinced by is that there weren't enough useful agricultural plants in the Americas.
@@j.f.fisher5318 I've read his books and I agree with your analysis, but that doesn't explain why people in the Michigan region who had a nascent copper culture abandoned it or why South Americans who were smelting and alloying bronze never used it more extensively.
Perhaps the blacksmith's craft in America, as in Europe, was a well-kept secret knowledge of specialists. The difference could be that in America the carriers of this knowledge were even fewer than here, and therefore mass production was not possible. Or the passing on of the knowledge was interrupted by war or natural disasters, because the knowers died. I don't think it is completely impossible that sporadic Europeans (for Phoenicians exotic trade routes and maps were certainly secret knowledge too) discovered America and brought this knowledge with them. This could explain a small group of initiates (of course speculative).
@@vanrensburgsgesicht Well for starters, the natives never did stop using it. Most of the modern copper mines in my area were well documented by European explorers and discovered because the native peoples were already mining it though is smaller amounts as their access to plentiful supplies was probably dwindling. One thing to understand is that when the most copper in the americas was being used.........they had the least developed trade routes established and there were a lot less people. You'll also see that the areas where copper is used most heavily, there isn't quality stone to use for tools, or at least not in the same volumes. My theory is that the peoples living in the great lakes area had plenty of copper but very little flint, chert etc..........so they were forced to use the copper which was fairly plentiful. That doesn't sound like a bad deal on the surface until you try to actually work some of this copper without being able to melt it. It's a HELL of a lot of work to make one simple knife blade as compared to a stone blade. More like forging iron without being able to heat it up enough. High labour, long process and probably very valuable as a result since there were less people to work it. As trade routes became more plentiful and developed, possibly due to the availability of the copper goods themselves, cheaper and easier to work imported stone became more readily available and the common people(growing in number) could then better afford stone which was easily worked and almost as effective as a tool. The demand for the copper diminished over time and it became a luxury good only. Mostly used for ornamental purposes rather than day to day items. Without furnace technology to melt the copper is was just too labour intensive to use once the smaller float copper(nugget) sources were dug out. Sure they had huge veins of solid copper which still exist today but breaking those down into useable pieces and then making items out of them is a monumental task. Much like the modern world, the price of labour can kill a product line. That's my theory.........based on very little evidence other than youtube videos lol.
Funny but the idea is that ships from the Mediterranean went there and back, not canoes. However that only holds water ( pun intended ) if there was a lack on copper, which of course there was not.
@@raclark2730 And that would be implying that ships from the Mediterranean bronze age could have crossed the atlantic, since they were made for coastal navigation.
@@ne0nmancer I am sure they could handle bigger seas, and the Mediterranean gets rough as well. Also its now common knowledge that Vikings were in North America, very similar ship design to some more ancient ships. I don't see what the big deal is of at least some ships doing it.
If there was copper being hauled across the ocean (deeply uneconomical since copper was all over Europe and Near East and plenty of evidence of its mining etc) then 1) it would have generated plenty of material evidence such as pottery shards, settlements, metal tools, stone tablets, and; 2) there would be evidence of agricultural and livestock transfer, as well as other species such as rats or seeds having been inadvertently carried. There’d also be genetic evidence from these transatlantic traders mixing with local populations.
Great points. Maybe only a boat made it every 50 years or something. That's like 5 voyages tops before the Minoans get wrecked. So many less than 1% of copper is unaccounted for. Probably came from Ireland
1. Thank you for this awesome video! I simply love ancient history very much. 2. Fun facts about Cyprus from German documentary "Das Bronzekartell": - One mine in Cyprus ist active for about 7000 years until today - It's estimated that Cyprus produced about 200.000 tons of copper within the last 7000 years - mostly without any machinery - The cooper of the Uluburu shipwreck has been matched to a cypriotic cooper mine via radioisotopes (see Das Bronzekartell) - My fav one: Cyprus mines melted the cooper directly on the Cyprus, burning EVERY available tree on the island - at least 13!!! times
The local history museum in the city I was born in has some of the copper that was mined in Lake Superior region. It was transported down from Michigan to Florida hundreds of years ago.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it. And if anyone reading this wants to know about the amazing Old Copper culture please see the link to the Ancient Americas video in the description.
If the theory went like "Tin had to be imported from America" it would have been more believable because Tin always was in relative short supply during the Bronze age. Copper was basically mined by every major Bronze Age Empire in their own back yard. So this theory is outright silly 🤣
that's exactly what I'd thought. Copper is common enough to waste on stuff like coins and decorations akin to economically useless metals like silver and gold. Despite its scarcity, nobody in the ancient world I've ever heard of made tin coins because it was too valuable. Copper coins were commonplace though.
@@j.f.fisher5318 The Bronze Age collapse in the Mediterranean came about because of the destruction of Tin trade and imports. With the arrival of the "Sea People" as chronicled by ancient Egypt we could assume that the trade of Tin was as good as dead by that time. Only two places were known to have large Tin mines at the time. Modern day Wales and Pakistan. Moving Tin from Pakistan to Egypt was an expensive affaire because it had to go through land and a few rivaling empires that can block the land trade as they see fit. The Tin that came from Wales was a longer route through the sea but was cheaper to move. When the "Sea People" appeared importing Tin from Wales became nigh impossible. And without Tin you can't forge Bronze weapons.
Even though there is tons of evidence showing that it was done, did you know that researchers have found at least two sites over here in Michigan where the copper that was mined was smelted and poured in the Oxhide ingots that were of common design in the Med and that the end of the settlements and mining came about at the same time the Minoan culture collapsed. So no it's not silly because they actually did so.
Another excellent video, and I like how you went straight for the debunk straight away, and then the depth of research to show the European copper mines. You bring the bronze age to life.
How nice to hear something as clear and decisive as, "But that is not true." For those statements alone it was worth watching the rest of the video! Thanks for the good work.
Being from Michigan, I’m glad that you did this video. A series of (barely researched) books called Mystic Michigan is available at most souvenir shops and even gas stations in northern Michigan. More than one of these books talks about how Bronze Age cultures obtained their copper from Michigan. To add to that, they aren’t even edited with many such mistakes as the “Colossus of Rhoads” or Phenicians. I have a BA in history and this angers me to no end. Ok, yeah, these books also talk about haunted houses, Sasquatch sightings, etc but I hate that they’re trying to present this as historical fact when the theory is wrong but they also can’t be bothered to check how Rhodes is supposed to be spelled. Especially since there’s a small town in central Michigan called Rhodes
Great video. I was born and currently live in Michigan. It's not uncommon for me to hear some old timers tell me or other people about how most of the copper in the bronze age was from the UP. Definitely great video
This was very interesting. I don't know why anyone would jump to the conclusion that copper was being shipped to Europe? IMO a better question is why didn't the majority of native Americans use metal weapons and tools? Some groups had access to metal and continued to use stone tools. Were there any social taboos that would prevent it?
The idea of ancient transatlantic contact goes back to at least the late 19th century when multiple hoaxes and forgeries were being created and "discovered" in fields and backyards in America. A major influence on this aspect came from the work of Barry Fell in the 1970s and 80s. The mythology has grown since then with various articles and it was promoted to a huge audience by Graham Hancock and now by some very popular TH-cam channels.
I find it interesting that Dan Davis fails to mention the "myth" that there were giants in the Americas that used soft metals as ornaments, tools, and weapons. This is per the Native Americans and early explorers [e.g. Sir Walter Raliegh] who were "there." A fierce and dangerous enemy, the use of copper may have been limited by the natives, who would be superstitious about its use. He also fails to mention the mines in the Great Lakes regions, which I propose the "Indians" never constructed. Neither did they make "mounds" that were hundreds of feet high and up to a kilometer in length. He mentions Graham Hancock, but never mentions Philip Coppens. Look him up for an opposing "theory," to this idea of total isolationism because of an Ocean you can cross in a few weeks, about 1 week at a time. the Norse did this, as you know. The Polynesians did even greater expanses in huge canoes. I am sorry to see so many people redirected by a few pages of Bronze Age history, as though IT WERE THE HISTORY of the ENTIRE WORLD.
I was unfamiliar with the claim about copper being transported from North America to Europe in Prehistory. From a logistical standpoint it seems next to impossible for the time period. Thanks for the fascinating video. Bronze Age mining and economics tend to be ignored in favour of more enticing topics like warfare, but without understanding how technology was made and how it impacted society you can't really get the full picture with regards to war. The fact that the people of the Bronze Age steppe (the Yamnaya) were already capable of making an iron dagger centuries before the official start of the Iron Age is an interesting topic in of itself.
Thank you. Yes it can tell us a lot about these societies. The great thing is that the work to understand this social impact is still ongoing so there will be more research published in future.
yeah, it's a dumb argument. Especially since Native Americans use river/lake type flat bottom vessels. So I guess their next logical assumption would be, "It must had been a European civilization, that used the natives as slave labor." As if European boats of the time weren't made for coastal hugging as well.
@@MarkVrem Come on! OBVIOUSLY it was space aliens! You know, the same ones who taught the Egyptians how to make incandescent light bulbs and Apache helicopters -- just the kind of thing a civilization that can travel between stars would be sure to use.
Boosting this for the algorithm. It's sad how what might seem like commonsense (you get what you need from it's nearest convenient source, not the other side of the planet) is ignored by lots ot people when it comes to our history
I only ever thought about these mines in the context of the Bronze Age, even then focusing more on tin mines and im-/exports. I never really thought about the scale of these operations this early in time. Besides the enormous qualities, it’s truly astounding what our forefathers managed to achieve with, from our perspective, so primitive yet ingenious tools. Thank you for the great insight!
The academic theory is that the majority of the copper in the Bronze Age was produced in Cyprus; named Kipris, because of the copper. It's postulated that the demise of the Eastern Mediterranean civilisations also involved the collapse of the Cypriot civilisation.
Big fan of Bernard Cornwell, I haven't been this excited to jump into a series since I read an Archers Tale almost 20 years ago. Payday can't get here soon enough!
Thank you very much. I was interested to find out there's no much in the way of copper smelting slag from Britain and Ireland because the ores were mostly malachite and azurite which leaves little to no slag. While the Alpine mines (and many other places) extracted most chalcoprite ore which does.
@@DanDavisHistory The copper ores used at that time and place indeed were mostly copper sulfides because the alpine glaciers had eroded away all (oxidized) copper sulfates so the miners had to develop the roasting process. But this is about 30 years ago and I have forgotten most of the results so be patient with me if I'm wrong.
Yes that's right. There's a great book on the subject of European copper mining by William O'Brien that covers the geology. The relationships between the geology, the wider environment, the people and their solutions in various places is incredibly interesting. The need for a steady supply of timber and transport of ores to smelting sites near or further away and so on speaks to the support the miners and smelters had from wider lowland communities.
@@DanDavisHistory I seem to remember that they did discover a smelting site on the Great Orme . But given that most of the area of the mines is covered with spoil from later mining, there may be other smelting areas yet to be discovered. There again there is a "hillfort" on the Orme which I don't recall ever being excavated. If you've got a valuable source of wealth then it would make sense to work it within some form of defensible area.
I just discovered your channel yesterday, and it's hard to stop watching your content. The script, the amount of information and illustration in every video is really outstanding. And I really like, that you can keep these highly informative and we'll researched topics relatively short. Really well done videos!
@@DanDavisHistory have you thought about doing a video on the “making of” one of your videos? What type of research do you conduct? How do you locate what I assume are royalty free videos/stills? How do you do what you do?
This idea seems ridiculous on the face of it. It seems like Occam's Razor is heavily weighted against it, too. Why does it make sense that european copper was hauled across a big giant ocean, as opposed to more local sources? That just seems silly.
You mean like how people traveled all the way from NY to Alaska or California for gold, back during the Copper and Bronze ages copper and tin were far more valued and people traveled far and wide for them so why couldn't people from the Med have traveled to North America for such.
@@Jarlemoore1 anybody dumb enough to travel to Alaska or California when, say, Connecticut had gold deserved all the dysentery and frostbite they got. That wasn't the case, however. But Mediterranean peoples that had copper all over their area? Why oh why would they ever travel for that? Cyprus, Anatolia, Sardinia and Spain had plenty. It was tin that needed traveling for, and the furthest they had to go for that was Afghanistan or the British Isles.
@@Jarlemoore1 As I've just pointed out to someone else, you really do need to study Bronze Age shipbuilding before believing that Egyptians, Minoans or Phoenicians travelled to North America.
@@Jarlemoore1 1. Travel was easier for those gold rushes. 2. Copper that was found everywhere was certainly not more valuable than gold at any time anywhere.
@@jamisojoI think point 2 might actually be untrue. I could definitely conceive of a set of events that would cause copper to be more valuable than gold either through extreme lack of copper or minimal if any desire for gold. Say after one of s local kingdoms invaded others and pillage their cities and take all the copper. Now you have no copper and they have all the gold and no one to sell it to since they just annihilated nearby potential buyers. Obviously this isn’t s historical claim by any means for events that did/could happen but I could see it being possible even if improbable.
Cannot stop wayching this fantastic channel! I have been a fan of anchient human cultures and the early use of metals and this channel satisfies a hard to reach itch. Thank you Dan Davis!
Great video! One of the things that annoys me, are the people that claim that there's no way the blocks that were used to build the pyramids could have been made using copper tools... 5 minutes googling would show that these copper tools had naturally occurring arsenic, making an alloy that was much harder than simply using pure copper.
What an outstanding channel this is. He manages to hit on the eras and places that match the gaps in my history education, which until recently I believed was pretty thorough.
Very interesting presentation, I live in Scotland and remember being younger and my mum would buy Cyprus potatoes, these had a really red skin and were delicious when roasted or deep fried after cooking and letting go cold before being put in the hot oil 🛢️🎉 now I knew where their red skin comes from, thank you Dan Davies history channel,,❤
Thanks, very informative. Did not know about early use of iron by the Yamnaya @ 2500 BC--or use of river side deposits rather than mountain sites. Also, the Balkans have not received sufficient attention in early bronze metalurgy.
Thank You so much for what i´ve never heard of before! At school (1954-1966 in Sweden) we learned: Stone age, Bronze age, Iron age, medieval age(no special details) and then a short story of "the rest". Thanks again for deeper info!
Did the ancient Egyptians invent Tic Toc? Did space aliens write the scripts for Alfred Hitchcock's movies? Can dirt be used to run your car? Did Bronze Age Europe get its Copper from America? No, they got it from Uranus.
Imagine if the Bronze Age Europeans had instead discovered and traded with the Amazon in South America. Then the copper would have been just one click away.
Thank you sir; that was most enjoyable. I have to now recalibrate my notions of Neolithic metal development. It seems the Balkans were an interesting place in the day. Thanks from Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
I was going to say, visited the pine Barrens for a school camping trip as a kid. And we went for a hike and there was a plethora of iron ore just laying on the ground. They said to leave it alone. Hollar at your boy for getting home with some of that sweet sweet ore, the same ore used in the high quality for the time weapons built with that ore used in the revolutionary war. Shout out to Camp Ockanickon.
Thanks for this. There is so much junk science and history on TH-cam. I nearly clicked on this thinking it was one such video until I saw your/creators name.
Copper isn't even that rare. Tin resources were the limiting factor in making bronze. Tin is more scarce than silver but nobody made coins or decorations from it in the ancient world. Silver and gold were used for coins and decorations because those metals don't have immediate economic value. Copper was used for such things because it was abundant enough to use for non-economic purposes.
Copper then Bronze was used to make weapons which needless to say you need to protect you people, kingdom and gold and wealth so copper back then was highly regarded and tin even more so once the Bronze Age kicked off.
@@christosvoskresye I'm sure copper and tin deposits were closely guarded since they were such valuable resources at that time, people don't like it when you start messing with their sources of wealth, you can have all the gold and wealth but if you can't defend it your going to lose it and that's where copper and tin then iron come into play.
@@markharris6171 He had arsenic and copper in his hair, which would indicate to me, proximity to a smelter. He was thought to beat man of means, but living rough. Ultimately, guys occupation is subject to debate.
Nice stuff. When it comes to the era of norse high-culture you could have mentioned that götar and svear was instrumental in moving the copper and tin around central-western-northern europe. These trade lanes drying up is a significant factor that lead into the viking age.
One interesting fact-in a remote part of Bolivia, the ruins of Puma Punku have diorite blocks clamped together using arsenical bronze. This is the only place in South America where such construction has ever been found.
Yes, the fact that we can identify the sites where the ore for bronze age artifacts was quarried completely puts the kaboosh on the idea that copper was brought over the Atlantic. Now! If you want a much more fun alternative history theory check out the idea that Troy was in Britain. Argued for most recently in "Where Troy Once Stood" by Wilkens and suggested by various others before that.
Actually Troy was in Wales. Caernarfon to be exact. We know this because of all the red hair and the thin haired cats that live locally. Plus the word Caernarfon is a celtic translation of Brad Pitt. North Wales the true Turks.
@@TwistedAlphonso1 Atantis is Egypt. As I said small haired cats and men with chin beards are give aways. Its to do with the Giants. This you already know.
Great video, it really does boggle the mind how extensively these trade networks were. The presence of R1b-L21, normally a British Bell Beaker Y-DNA haplogroup in southern Scandinavia could potentially be explained by the Bronze Age trade network.
Is the copper from Transcarpathia related to where the earliest transport wheel was found in Slovenia? Would correspond with the need to transport heavy ores long distances, perhaps to the Adriatic.
While there was transfer of goods between the Adriatic and the other side of the Alps, the Slovenian wheel was probably more suitable for a two wheeled handcart to move things around the village - bringing firewood back from the woods, that kind of thing. Most long distance ore transport would have been done by river and only that last little bit from the river or coast to the village would be done by animal, human, or (after they were invented) wagon.
@@DanDavisHistory Amazing response, thank you for clarifying that. So smelting was usually done on site or close nearby I'm assuming, ingots being somewhat more transferable.
Yes pretty much as close as possible. But they needed a lot of fuel for the smelting process so it was important to site the furnaces somewhere with long term access to wood / charcoal. Surprisingly on some of the Aegean islands they might, perhaps, have brought ore from mines on nearby islands to the furnaces on another island. This is because the local geography meant prevailing winds rising up the steep slopes blasted air in to the furnaces. And they could only achieve this on one or two islands with steep slopes facing the prevailing wind. And they can tell this because testing the slag at these sites gives results from more than one nearby island. So yes the smelting was done as near as possible to the ore extraction but there were other factors to consider.
There is a strange tendency to want to believe conspiratorial theories rather than actually doing the work of reading real research and the real debates that exist between scholars of a subject. Wait... Maybe not that strange, it's just laziness.
great stuff. Yeah I know alot of this already but everytime someone does a video or a article about the copper/tin mining or bronze smelting in ancient times I'm hooked and learn something new.
mikepette. The Great Orme copper mines have a website that you should find interesting. There are quite a few articles written about copper mining etc. There are academic sites on the internet that if you register with them you'll be able to either read or down load the the articles for free. Look for articles by Noel Gale, or Andres Hauptmann on the isotope analysis of the copper from the Uluburun shipwreck. For copper smelting in the UK, particularly in Wales, look for articles by Simon Timberlake. There's also an excellent book on, Prehistoric copper mining in Europe 5500 - 500 BC written by William O'Brien. For an excellent introduction to Bronze Age Europe then try The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age. You might also want to look at the remains of the Bronze Age wreck sites off Salcombe in Devon, England and study the type of coastal sewn plank boats found in Britain. One other thing to consider is that the Uluburun ship was not Minoan, as by circa 1327 BC the Mycenaean Greeks had taken over the Minoan maritime trade. Most probably it was either Mycenaean or Phoenician. 👍
Really cool to hear Michigan mentioned in one of your videos, I live there! Obviously copper is spread all throughout Michigan but a lot of it is in the Upper Peninsula. The Native Americans in the area called the Upper Peninsula something like, "Land of Trees" because all that was there to them was forests. It wasn't until the 1800's that a geologist from the US was sent up north to survey the land and he found so much copper and iron that some was open to the air when he saw it.
Exactly how accurate is the trace metal fingerprint (signature)? Can two mines geographically separated still produce similar signatures? Could you display side by side graphs to demonstrate the difference between Great Lakes copper ore and Welch copper ore?
so the reason that isotopic signatures for various sources differ from eachother is that some of those isotopes (lead for instance) are subject to radioactive decay, which means that not only will the original ratios be different from outcrop to outcrop when they're first formed geologically, but the older ones will have had longer for certain elements to have decayed into other elemental isotopes. Equifinality is basically impossible because of that, especially if you're using multiple isotopic signatures.
You should do a video on flint and stone swords that were being made as bronze and copper tools a weapons tech spread. There are amazing stone weapons that look like their metal counterparts.
Mediterranean copper coming from the Great Lakes? I feel brain cells committing suicide just hearing that string of words is it possible? Welll yes about as possible as me becoming a multiple millionaire simply by buying one lottery ticket each week .
Dang. I wish time team would go excavate some of these sites. I’d love to see what they found. Very interesting topic. I had no idea Cyprus was a mining site. I only ever thought of their trees
Bronze age European ships couldn't sail across the Atlantic. Even when traveling across the Mediterranean they stayed close to the coast. They also couldn't hold many supplies for the crew (another reason for staying close to land) so even if they somehow reached America they wouldn't be able to fill the ships with both copper and enough food for the journey back
Tiger GamingGR. Yes, you are perfectly correct on that. I recently had to email Professor Pulak, who conducted the excavation on the Late Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck, to fact check something I'd found in one of these pseudo archaeology books claiming that the Minoans sailed to America. He also pointed out that while it may have been possible on a reasonably calm day, the fact that the Uluburun ship had only a keel plank as opposed to a fully developed keel, along with a sail that would not have allowed the ship to sail into the wind, makes the idea a non starter. As for the two "reconstructions" that have been made and sailed, and rowed, around the Mediterranean, well let's put it this way, the reconstruction of one of the (Minoan), Thera ships from the frescos (circa 1600 BC), is based solely on the image and then designed on a computer. That's bad enough, but then they have it being made to use oars. The fresco shows the occupants paddling! Anyone want to try paddling across the North Atlantic? The other "reconstruction" was of the Uluburun ship (circa 1320 BC). This is not a Minoan ship as the Mycenaeans had taken over the Minoan sea trade by then. The amount of actual ships hull timbers still remaining was approx 3 %. They then based their reconstruction on an image of one of the Egyptian ships used in the Red Sea to travel to Punt. So yet again, it's not going to be accurate. The idea of people traveling from the Mediterranean to the Great Lakes is simply a non starter, no matter how much people want to believe otherwise.
Even if they could, and they were known (which they weren't) it wouldn't have been economically rational to do so because there were sources closer at hand that could be extracted or traded for at far lower cost.
@@adambane1719 Interesting comment Adam. Would you like to expand on it further.😊 From the Oxford Dictionary, " supposed or purporting to be but not really so; false; not genuine," also " resembling or imitating (pseudo-language; pseudo-science)."
I can't decide if people who claim things like this (copper from the Americas), and flat earthers, are just trolling on such a high level that they never give away the joke, or if they are actually that silly.
@@Ck-zk3we Thanks for making it so incredibly easy to discount what you and your side are putting forth as an intelligent argument. Good lord what a statement. Just wow.
Here is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
I live on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan, USA,, aka The Copper Country. Although copper is not currently mined here, there is a well documented history of modern and ancient copper mining. The great majority of copper deposits here are native copper - almost pure copper. As a historian and tour guide I have heard many people talk about this theory that our copper went to Europe. Especially that it was Europeans who mined it. No evidence to support it. Zero. A lot of the unsupported thinking comes from some calculations done decades ago by some investigators. They counted the known ancient mining pits and multiplied that number by "their" estimate of how much copper could have been removed from the average pit. This resulted in a huge amount of copper - many millions of pounds. Proponents of the North America export across the Atlantic theories compare that huge amount of copper to the amount found so far in ancient North American sites - a much lower figure. So, there is *Missing Copper*! This seems to be the main "evidence" that NA copper went to people on other continents.
Thank you, Jim. Yes that about sums it up. There is also a history of archeological hoaxes and forgeries dating back to at least the late 19th century and reinvigorated in the 1970s arguing for prehistoric transatlantic contact and this is layered on top of the ancient copper mining misunderstandings.
The NG . Provide evidence that metal smelting has its own original placement in different time periods in various historical places. So that means melting of metal happened spasmodically in various places.
Nibiru people took most of the metal from Earth for the Anunaki to use in repairing there spaceships. They'll be along next week to pick up the rent. Honestly though, sometimes I get a kick out of these weird ideas.
Sad to see outlandish theories like this get touted around even in the age of the internet. A quick google search would tell you very quickly why anyone in eurasia would have no need for copper from another continent. Even the much rarer tin wasn't rare enough to warrant the search that far out. I can't stress enough how sad it is to see people not using the greatest library in the world being used for the most unimportant reasons.
such a good video and info. they have applied similar analysis to ancient silver coins and the copper and lead traces in them. They try to figure out what mines the metal for the coins came from. Some stuff about 2nd punic war era coins.
These stories are always fun to think about but don't stand up when you apply any real thought to it, there'd be mountains of evidence if there really had been a transatlantic copper mining and trading operation going on.
Oh you mean a clay tablet with Minoan Linear A writing on it that was found in Michigan 5 years before Sir Author Evans discovered the Minoan civilization on Crete and it's Linear A language is something to think about, you know it's kind of hard to fake something that no one knew about yet so basically the Minoans had to be there.
At first I was quite skeptical of the idea of engaging with a conspiracy theory, and a particularly silly one in this case, but I thought that was very well done and this has to be one of your best video. I guess a nice topic to explore now would be bronze age building techniques.
A few years ago while doing some research about the Shanidar cave copper pendant which is 11,000 years old, I found out copper ore while not as abundant as many raw materials used during that period is sometimes found on the surface and in caves is very distinctive and relatively easy to spot. The main problem I see with this is that we forget that animals as distant from us as crows are attracted to shiny things and when copper ore is struck with an impact of a solid object leaves a dusty substance and becomes clearer which would be noteworthy for our neolithic ancestors obsessed with fertility and beads as it can be hammered and polished and it doesn't look like most things found in nature out there in the open by those times.
You really made a silk purse out of a sow's ear with this excellent video. Jeepers, there are some awful weirdos on the internet. Everybody knows my auntie Edith von Däniken built the pyramids on her day off. Fact.
You evidently haven't seen all the evidence which shows this to be true, just because academics have their heads in their assess and follow a certain path of ignorance doesn't mean that history is always what we they want us to think it is.
@@Jarlemoore1 "have their heads in there asses". You must be a real archeological professional. Is that how you write in the journal articles you publish?
@@Jarlemoore1 Copper ore deposits are quite common in Europe. It was mined all over the place. The metal that was in short supply in the bronze age was tin, not copper. Tin was only available from a few places, the most important of which was Cornwall.
@@Tugela60 True but those copper deposits and mines would have been closely guarded by the empires that ruled the area, if a new source of copper was found that no one had claim to don't you think the Minoans or anyone for that fact would go for it even if the risk of sailing so far was very high?
If you enjoyed the video please hit "like", it really helps.
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@@hiqhduke I would love to do that, I've had it in mind for a while. It's an incredible story - lots of parallels with the Indo-European expansion. But I'll need to do lots of research first because I don't know much about African prehistory - so it'll take me a while before I can do it.
Excellent answer for a conspiracy. With any conspiracy, I always ask, "What would be gained by successfully hiding said truth?" If nothing stands to be gained, I am less likely to believe a given conspiracy.
For instance, I _do_ believe that that the US military conducts unethical experiments and might benefit by having people believe that aliens or UFOs are behind strange occurrences, particularly those that make people sick or leave lasting physical problems. I can't prove it, but it is plausible.
@@hiqhduke - If your goal is to exonerate Europeans from their dominant colonial role in the region, that's pretty shady. Often, modern conflicts in Africa have an unknown source, someone behind it - stirring up latent hostilities, in other words, using the divide and conquer tactic. Never be surprised when that turns up in the history of indigenous people losing their land.
The "Lost Boys" of Sudan (I think) for instance were chased out by Africans, but why? Turns out oil sat ready for extraction. And you can be certain that Africans weren't behind the extraction goal. That would have to be China or a western nation corporation.
What is that song from 2:16?
its a big yes , there is plenty of archaeological evidence of trans atlantic trade route during antiquity , the only problem is that it disproves the out of Africa theory so its declared to be "Pseudo"
I appreciate this not being a 20min "proof" against the obvious. Get it out of the way, then onto something worthwhile. Really cool stuff as usual.
Same here. When I saw the title and the image, I was like "nah". But I watch so eagerly the videos of this channel usually, so, here I am.
No it's not obvious because there is a lot of evidence that copper did come from North America, it wasn't in the tonnage that was mined in let's say Crete and other places and copper was mined for a long time before that, it doesn't mean that some enterprising Minoans and others couldn't have went to great lengths and risks to become rich and powerful by traveling across the Atlantic and mining, smelting and bringing copper back home to sell or forge.
To much evidence in many areas including chemical analyst on copper samples found in Crete and on a Phoenician ship wreck show that someone was indeed mining and smelting copper here in the Great Lakes region in the ancient past and shipping it to the Med.
@@etistone I know what you're saying, sometimes I wonder @ the time wasted clicking-on "why the earth isn't flat". It certainly wasn't for research! There's just something about the channel, maybe a sense of depth that transcends simple interest in a topic? I don't know, just seems to have an easygoing command over the subject without a "lecture" feel. A unique presenter.
@@Jarlemoore1 I wasn't sure to expect this, but I understand. I am 100% for questioning "concensus" views, which I don't offer as mere lip-service. But saying that does make for these uncomfortable moments. When I have to realize beforehand that engaging or ignoring all ends up at the same place. Nowhere. So let's just say I concede. Or if you prefer..."Really? I'll have to look into that"!
The art of honest click bait
I think the real mystery is why widespread use of metals never took hold in the Americas. The people of North America used copper to some extent for a while and then apparently stopped using it. In South America, they apparently even smelted a limited amount of copper alloys but AFAIK it never got significant use for weapons or tools. I would think copper and bronze would confer the same advantages in the Americas as it did in Europe but apparently for some reason the Native Americans didn't think so.
It's a great question.
Jarred Diamonds take on the question is imo flawed but does make some very strong arguments.
Basically, Eurasia has a lot of places within trading distance of each other that have similar climates. This allowed agriculture to spread rapidly along the region between Spain and India, and the plains of China were large enough to be their own separate cultural center. Meanwhile the vast steppes and the Indian ocean and seasonally-reversing monsoon winds and east asian seas and island chains created lots of opportunities for less direct but still culturally significant trade.
The Americas by contrast are more broken up into smaller climate regions so there is less opportunity for those kinds of extremely long distance exchange of ideas.
Also, his point about nearly all the economically-useful herbivores in the Americas having been wiped out seems valid, as does African fauna being universally impossible to tame.
What Diamond claims that I'm less convinced by is that there weren't enough useful agricultural plants in the Americas.
@@j.f.fisher5318 I've read his books and I agree with your analysis, but that doesn't explain why people in the Michigan region who had a nascent copper culture abandoned it or why South Americans who were smelting and alloying bronze never used it more extensively.
Perhaps the blacksmith's craft in America, as in Europe, was a well-kept secret knowledge of specialists. The difference could be that in America the carriers of this knowledge were even fewer than here, and therefore mass production was not possible. Or the passing on of the knowledge was interrupted by war or natural disasters, because the knowers died.
I don't think it is completely impossible that sporadic Europeans (for Phoenicians exotic trade routes and maps were certainly secret knowledge too) discovered America and brought this knowledge with them. This could explain a small group of initiates (of course speculative).
@@vanrensburgsgesicht Well for starters, the natives never did stop using it. Most of the modern copper mines in my area were well documented by European explorers and discovered because the native peoples were already mining it though is smaller amounts as their access to plentiful supplies was probably dwindling. One thing to understand is that when the most copper in the americas was being used.........they had the least developed trade routes established and there were a lot less people. You'll also see that the areas where copper is used most heavily, there isn't quality stone to use for tools, or at least not in the same volumes. My theory is that the peoples living in the great lakes area had plenty of copper but very little flint, chert etc..........so they were forced to use the copper which was fairly plentiful. That doesn't sound like a bad deal on the surface until you try to actually work some of this copper without being able to melt it. It's a HELL of a lot of work to make one simple knife blade as compared to a stone blade. More like forging iron without being able to heat it up enough. High labour, long process and probably very valuable as a result since there were less people to work it. As trade routes became more plentiful and developed, possibly due to the availability of the copper goods themselves, cheaper and easier to work imported stone became more readily available and the common people(growing in number) could then better afford stone which was easily worked and almost as effective as a tool. The demand for the copper diminished over time and it became a luxury good only. Mostly used for ornamental purposes rather than day to day items. Without furnace technology to melt the copper is was just too labour intensive to use once the smaller float copper(nugget) sources were dug out. Sure they had huge veins of solid copper which still exist today but breaking those down into useable pieces and then making items out of them is a monumental task. Much like the modern world, the price of labour can kill a product line. That's my theory.........based on very little evidence other than youtube videos lol.
"Bye honey I'm gonna make a trans Atlantic crossing in a dugout canoe with a ton of heavy metal."
Funny but the idea is that ships from the Mediterranean went there and back, not canoes. However that only holds water ( pun intended ) if there was a lack on copper, which of course there was not.
@@raclark2730 And that would be implying that ships from the Mediterranean bronze age could have crossed the atlantic, since they were made for coastal navigation.
@@ne0nmancer I am sure they could handle bigger seas, and the Mediterranean gets rough as well. Also its now common knowledge that Vikings were in North America, very similar ship design to some more ancient ships. I don't see what the big deal is of at least some ships doing it.
Be sure to bring back a few flying pigs as souvenirs
His Mrs would have said "Right! Who is she?"
Best excuse for a side gig ever. 😂
If there was copper being hauled across the ocean (deeply uneconomical since copper was all over Europe and Near East and plenty of evidence of its mining etc) then 1) it would have generated plenty of material evidence such as pottery shards, settlements, metal tools, stone tablets, and; 2) there would be evidence of agricultural and livestock transfer, as well as other species such as rats or seeds having been inadvertently carried. There’d also be genetic evidence from these transatlantic traders mixing with local populations.
Great points. Maybe only a boat made it every 50 years or something. That's like 5 voyages tops before the Minoans get wrecked. So many less than 1% of copper is unaccounted for. Probably came from Ireland
Who needs evidence for a good story and gullible people?
@@ThatOliveMrT 6
Well U know how Americans think, don`t U? xD
Before there was even big bang and Jesus the America was already there xD
Where even does the theory come from?
1. Thank you for this awesome video! I simply love ancient history very much.
2. Fun facts about Cyprus from German documentary "Das Bronzekartell":
- One mine in Cyprus ist active for about 7000 years until today
- It's estimated that Cyprus produced about 200.000 tons of copper within the last 7000 years - mostly without any machinery
- The cooper of the Uluburu shipwreck has been matched to a cypriotic cooper mine via radioisotopes (see Das Bronzekartell)
- My fav one: Cyprus mines melted the cooper directly on the Cyprus, burning EVERY available tree on the island - at least 13!!! times
Imagine if they discovered mineral charcoal and imported it from Europe, the trees could be saved 😞
@@fenrirgglol wtf
Cyprus name comes from copper !!
The local history museum in the city I was born in has some of the copper that was mined in Lake Superior region. It was transported down from Michigan to Florida hundreds of years ago.
Very well done! Loved all the details you packed in.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it. And if anyone reading this wants to know about the amazing Old Copper culture please see the link to the Ancient Americas video in the description.
I love your channel
If the theory went like "Tin had to be imported from America" it would have been more believable because Tin always was in relative short supply during the Bronze age.
Copper was basically mined by every major Bronze Age Empire in their own back yard.
So this theory is outright silly 🤣
that's exactly what I'd thought. Copper is common enough to waste on stuff like coins and decorations akin to economically useless metals like silver and gold. Despite its scarcity, nobody in the ancient world I've ever heard of made tin coins because it was too valuable. Copper coins were commonplace though.
@@j.f.fisher5318 The Bronze Age collapse in the Mediterranean came about because of the destruction of Tin trade and imports. With the arrival of the "Sea People" as chronicled by ancient Egypt we could assume that the trade of Tin was as good as dead by that time. Only two places were known to have large Tin mines at the time. Modern day Wales and Pakistan. Moving Tin from Pakistan to Egypt was an expensive affaire because it had to go through land and a few rivaling empires that can block the land trade as they see fit.
The Tin that came from Wales was a longer route through the sea but was cheaper to move. When the "Sea People" appeared importing Tin from Wales became nigh impossible. And without Tin you can't forge Bronze weapons.
Even though there is tons of evidence showing that it was done, did you know that researchers have found at least two sites over here in Michigan where the copper that was mined was smelted and poured in the Oxhide ingots that were of common design in the Med and that the end of the settlements and mining came about at the same time the Minoan culture collapsed.
So no it's not silly because they actually did so.
@@Jarlemoore1 Sauce pls.
Correct, it's so silly, it's silly-silly-silly-silly-silly-silly!!! Agreed!
Another excellent video, and I like how you went straight for the debunk straight away, and then the depth of research to show the European copper mines.
You bring the bronze age to life.
One of the biggest prehistoric copper mines in Europe is at the Great Orme in North Wales It was only discovered in the 80,s
Cornwall tin has been found in African bronze
How nice to hear something as clear and decisive as, "But that is not true." For those statements alone it was worth watching the rest of the video! Thanks for the good work.
Being from Michigan, I’m glad that you did this video. A series of (barely researched) books called Mystic Michigan is available at most souvenir shops and even gas stations in northern Michigan. More than one of these books talks about how Bronze Age cultures obtained their copper from Michigan. To add to that, they aren’t even edited with many such mistakes as the “Colossus of Rhoads” or Phenicians. I have a BA in history and this angers me to no end. Ok, yeah, these books also talk about haunted houses, Sasquatch sightings, etc but I hate that they’re trying to present this as historical fact when the theory is wrong but they also can’t be bothered to check how Rhodes is supposed to be spelled. Especially since there’s a small town in central Michigan called Rhodes
Great video. I was born and currently live in Michigan. It's not uncommon for me to hear some old timers tell me or other people about how most of the copper in the bronze age was from the UP. Definitely great video
"They would've taken great care of their tools, just as we do now,"
Omg you have definitely not met my husband lol
This was very interesting. I don't know why anyone would jump to the conclusion that copper was being shipped to Europe? IMO a better question is why didn't the majority of native Americans use metal weapons and tools? Some groups had access to metal and continued to use stone tools. Were there any social taboos that would prevent it?
Graham Hancock reasons mostly.
The idea of ancient transatlantic contact goes back to at least the late 19th century when multiple hoaxes and forgeries were being created and "discovered" in fields and backyards in America. A major influence on this aspect came from the work of Barry Fell in the 1970s and 80s. The mythology has grown since then with various articles and it was promoted to a huge audience by Graham Hancock and now by some very popular TH-cam channels.
Copper was basically too soft and didn't hold an edge as well as flint. But they could make copper axes that worked well.
Flint is easier to get and it can have a much sharper edge. As a tool to skin animals it is superior.
I find it interesting that Dan Davis fails to mention the "myth" that there were giants in the Americas that used soft metals as ornaments, tools, and weapons. This is per the Native Americans and early explorers [e.g. Sir Walter Raliegh] who were "there." A fierce and dangerous enemy, the use of copper may have been limited by the natives, who would be superstitious about its use. He also fails to mention the mines in the Great Lakes regions, which I propose the "Indians" never constructed. Neither did they make "mounds" that were hundreds of feet high and up to a kilometer in length.
He mentions Graham Hancock, but never mentions Philip Coppens. Look him up for an opposing "theory," to this idea of total isolationism because of an Ocean you can cross in a few weeks, about 1 week at a time. the Norse did this, as you know. The Polynesians did even greater expanses in huge canoes.
I am sorry to see so many people redirected by a few pages of Bronze Age history, as though IT WERE THE HISTORY of the ENTIRE WORLD.
I was unfamiliar with the claim about copper being transported from North America to Europe in Prehistory. From a logistical standpoint it seems next to impossible for the time period.
Thanks for the fascinating video. Bronze Age mining and economics tend to be ignored in favour of more enticing topics like warfare, but without understanding how technology was made and how it impacted society you can't really get the full picture with regards to war. The fact that the people of the Bronze Age steppe (the Yamnaya) were already capable of making an iron dagger centuries before the official start of the Iron Age is an interesting topic in of itself.
Thank you. Yes it can tell us a lot about these societies. The great thing is that the work to understand this social impact is still ongoing so there will be more research published in future.
yeah, it's a dumb argument. Especially since Native Americans use river/lake type flat bottom vessels. So I guess their next logical assumption would be, "It must had been a European civilization, that used the natives as slave labor." As if European boats of the time weren't made for coastal hugging as well.
@@MarkVrem Come on! OBVIOUSLY it was space aliens! You know, the same ones who taught the Egyptians how to make incandescent light bulbs and Apache helicopters -- just the kind of thing a civilization that can travel between stars would be sure to use.
@@MarkVrem dumb is thinking it’s difficult to sail across the Atlantic
Yeah, it's part of these fringe theories that Egypt, Minoans, Atlantians, etc discovered and set up colonies in the Americas.
Boosting this for the algorithm. It's sad how what might seem like commonsense (you get what you need from it's nearest convenient source, not the other side of the planet) is ignored by lots ot people when it comes to our history
But...maybe the Olmekes of Central America could sell copper to a cheaper price by employing cheap labour from the Indus Valley?
I only ever thought about these mines in the context of the Bronze Age, even then focusing more on tin mines and im-/exports. I never really thought about the scale of these operations this early in time. Besides the enormous qualities, it’s truly astounding what our forefathers managed to achieve with, from our perspective, so primitive yet ingenious tools. Thank you for the great insight!
The academic theory is that the majority of the copper in the Bronze Age was produced in Cyprus; named Kipris, because of the copper. It's postulated that the demise of the Eastern Mediterranean civilisations also involved the collapse of the Cypriot civilisation.
Killer combo of thorough scientific research and engaging storytelling
Getting so good at crafting videos now, music and images were on-point. Thanks.
Reading some of the comments I realised yet again that Patriotism beyond a certain point consumes rational thought....
congrats, youre a libtard idiot.
That would imply rational thought was even apriciated. American politics points to the opposite.
We're talking about Americans correct?
Hi Dan, just want to add my thanks for another great video filled with facts from legitimate research. Much appreciated.
Big fan of Bernard Cornwell, I haven't been this excited to jump into a series since I read an Archers Tale almost 20 years ago. Payday can't get here soon enough!
Never heard of this, thank god.
In my university years I analyzed copper slags from the Alpine Region. Excellent video (again).
Thank you very much. I was interested to find out there's no much in the way of copper smelting slag from Britain and Ireland because the ores were mostly malachite and azurite which leaves little to no slag. While the Alpine mines (and many other places) extracted most chalcoprite ore which does.
@@DanDavisHistory The copper ores used at that time and place indeed were mostly copper sulfides because the alpine glaciers had eroded away all (oxidized) copper sulfates so the miners had to develop the roasting process.
But this is about 30 years ago and I have forgotten most of the results so be patient with me if I'm wrong.
Yes that's right. There's a great book on the subject of European copper mining by William O'Brien that covers the geology. The relationships between the geology, the wider environment, the people and their solutions in various places is incredibly interesting. The need for a steady supply of timber and transport of ores to smelting sites near or further away and so on speaks to the support the miners and smelters had from wider lowland communities.
@@DanDavisHistory I seem to remember that they did discover a smelting site on the Great Orme . But given that most of the area of the mines is covered with spoil from later mining, there may be other smelting areas yet to be discovered.
There again there is a "hillfort" on the Orme which I don't recall ever being excavated. If you've got a valuable source of wealth then it would make sense to work it within some form of defensible area.
I just discovered your channel yesterday, and it's hard to stop watching your content. The script, the amount of information and illustration in every video is really outstanding. And I really like, that you can keep these highly informative and we'll researched topics relatively short. Really well done videos!
Thank you very much, I'm glad you found the channel.
@@DanDavisHistory have you thought about doing a video on the “making of” one of your videos? What type of research do you conduct? How do you locate what I assume are royalty free videos/stills? How do you do what you do?
This idea seems ridiculous on the face of it. It seems like Occam's Razor is heavily weighted against it, too. Why does it make sense that european copper was hauled across a big giant ocean, as opposed to more local sources? That just seems silly.
It was just the bad copper from scammers that came from the americas, lol!
I always thought that was a long way to go for something they already had in the first place.
You mean like how people traveled all the way from NY to Alaska or California for gold, back during the Copper and Bronze ages copper and tin were far more valued and people traveled far and wide for them so why couldn't people from the Med have traveled to North America for such.
@@Jarlemoore1 anybody dumb enough to travel to Alaska or California when, say, Connecticut had gold deserved all the dysentery and frostbite they got.
That wasn't the case, however. But Mediterranean peoples that had copper all over their area? Why oh why would they ever travel for that? Cyprus, Anatolia, Sardinia and Spain had plenty. It was tin that needed traveling for, and the furthest they had to go for that was Afghanistan or the British Isles.
@@Jarlemoore1 As I've just pointed out to someone else, you really do need to study Bronze Age shipbuilding before believing that Egyptians, Minoans or Phoenicians travelled to North America.
@@Jarlemoore1 1. Travel was easier for those gold rushes.
2. Copper that was found everywhere was certainly not more valuable than gold at any time anywhere.
@@jamisojoI think point 2 might actually be untrue. I could definitely conceive of a set of events that would cause copper to be more valuable than gold either through extreme lack of copper or minimal if any desire for gold. Say after one of s local kingdoms invaded others and pillage their cities and take all the copper. Now you have no copper and they have all the gold and no one to sell it to since they just annihilated nearby potential buyers. Obviously this isn’t s historical claim by any means for events that did/could happen but I could see it being possible even if improbable.
Cannot stop wayching this fantastic channel! I have been a fan of anchient human cultures and the early use of metals and this channel satisfies a hard to reach itch.
Thank you Dan Davis!
Great video! One of the things that annoys me, are the people that claim that there's no way the blocks that were used to build the pyramids could have been made using copper tools... 5 minutes googling would show that these copper tools had naturally occurring arsenic, making an alloy that was much harder than simply using pure copper.
And they could just use the tools to rub around wet sand and cut through anything.
What an outstanding channel this is. He manages to hit on the eras and places that match the gaps in my history education, which until recently I believed was pretty thorough.
Thanks for making these vids! I appreciate the research that went into them.
Very interesting presentation, I live in Scotland and remember being younger and my mum would buy Cyprus potatoes, these had a really red skin and were delicious when roasted or deep fried after cooking and letting go cold before being put in the hot oil 🛢️🎉 now I knew where their red skin comes from, thank you Dan Davies history channel,,❤
This was fantastic Dan! Great work
Always interesting to watch Dan’s excellently researched and presented content.
Thanks, very informative. Did not know about early use of iron by the Yamnaya @ 2500 BC--or use of river side deposits rather than mountain sites. Also, the Balkans have not received sufficient attention in early bronze metalurgy.
Thank You so much for what i´ve never heard of before! At school (1954-1966 in Sweden) we learned: Stone age, Bronze age, Iron age, medieval age(no special details) and then a short story of "the rest". Thanks again for deeper info!
(And with Swedish details.)
Did the ancient Egyptians invent Tic Toc?
Did space aliens write the scripts for Alfred Hitchcock's movies?
Can dirt be used to run your car?
Did Bronze Age Europe get its Copper from America?
No, they got it from Uranus.
stop smoking crack. Not good for ya.
Didn’t know primordial gods were just dishing out metals like that. Especially the personification of the sky itself!
Talking crap again
dude my uncle is yttoes a mesotpotamtapmatmian emperor come bacvk frum the dead and he needs moneyzz
Something tells me you'd be better in a Circus than a Science class. Please stay posted, this is far from over.
Had a good chuckle over that one person using a file tang as a chisel/drill.
Imagine if the Bronze Age Europeans had instead discovered and traded with the Amazon in South America.
Then the copper would have been just one click away.
Pretty easy trip. Its impossible that they were colonizing west Africa but never made it to South America
@@Ck-zk3we Umm.... Except that Africa was much much closer than South America.
I mean.... other than that. Maybe you need to check out a map.
Thank you sir; that was most enjoyable. I have to now recalibrate my notions of Neolithic metal development. It seems the Balkans were an interesting place in the day. Thanks from Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
In the copper and bronze ages copper was plentiful throughout the Bronze age world. It was tin that was rare.
I was going to say, visited the pine Barrens for a school camping trip as a kid. And we went for a hike and there was a plethora of iron ore just laying on the ground. They said to leave it alone. Hollar at your boy for getting home with some of that sweet sweet ore, the same ore used in the high quality for the time weapons built with that ore used in the revolutionary war. Shout out to Camp Ockanickon.
Thanks for this.
There is so much junk science and history on TH-cam.
I nearly clicked on this thinking it was one such video until I saw your/creators name.
The family’s excitement over going to Disneyland was crazier than she anticipated.
Copper isn't even that rare. Tin resources were the limiting factor in making bronze. Tin is more scarce than silver but nobody made coins or decorations from it in the ancient world. Silver and gold were used for coins and decorations because those metals don't have immediate economic value. Copper was used for such things because it was abundant enough to use for non-economic purposes.
Copper then Bronze was used to make weapons which needless to say you need to protect you people, kingdom and gold and wealth so copper back then was highly regarded and tin even more so once the Bronze Age kicked off.
@@Jarlemoore1 "All I can buy," says gold. "All I WILL TAKE," says bulat.
@@christosvoskresye
I'm sure copper and tin deposits were closely guarded since they were such valuable resources at that time, people don't like it when you start messing with their sources of wealth, you can have all the gold and wealth but if you can't defend it your going to lose it and that's where copper and tin then iron come into play.
@@Jarlemoore1 Yeah, that's the whole point of the Russian proverb.
When Dan says BC/AD instead of BCE/CE my heart is happy
Saaaaaame.
Nice work. On the subject of copper, Ötzi the Iceman, who was apparently involved in copper production or trade, would be good subject.
Yes that's a good idea I might do that next.
I was thinking maybe he was prospecting. I have seen that he might have been murdered. Maybe got into someone else's "claim". ?
Yes the Iceman pushed back the Copper age dating by 600 years with his copper axe.
@@markharris6171 He had arsenic and copper in his hair, which would indicate to me, proximity to a smelter. He was thought to beat man of means, but living rough. Ultimately, guys occupation is subject to debate.
@@markharris6171 I have my own speculations, but I'll save that for commenting after Dan's video
Nice stuff. When it comes to the era of norse high-culture you could have mentioned that götar and svear was instrumental in moving the copper and tin around central-western-northern europe. These trade lanes drying up is a significant factor that lead into the viking age.
Your video editing really is top quality.
Thank you.
Awesome. I look forward to a video on the Nordic Bronze Age!
some people just can't stand admitting they are wrong so they keep up with the lie.
Thanks for another exciting synopsis Dan! So much data responding to multi disciplinary and comparative analysis now...
I like how the thumbnail just says "no." 😆
One interesting fact-in a remote part of Bolivia, the ruins of Puma Punku have diorite blocks clamped together using arsenical bronze. This is the only place in South America where such construction has ever been found.
Yes, the fact that we can identify the sites where the ore for bronze age artifacts was quarried completely puts the kaboosh on the idea that copper was brought over the Atlantic.
Now! If you want a much more fun alternative history theory check out the idea that Troy was in Britain. Argued for most recently in "Where Troy Once Stood" by Wilkens and suggested by various others before that.
Actually Troy was in Wales. Caernarfon to be exact. We know this because of all the red hair and the thin haired cats that live locally. Plus the word Caernarfon is a celtic translation of Brad Pitt. North Wales the true Turks.
Actually Troy was is Egypt
Troy was Atlantis
@@TwistedAlphonso1 Atantis is Egypt. As I said small haired cats and men with chin beards are give aways. Its to do with the Giants. This you already know.
So we are all agreed, Troy was not in Troy, lol.
Great video, it really does boggle the mind how extensively these trade networks were. The presence of R1b-L21, normally a British Bell Beaker Y-DNA haplogroup in southern Scandinavia could potentially be explained by the Bronze Age trade network.
Is the copper from Transcarpathia related to where the earliest transport wheel was found in Slovenia? Would correspond with the need to transport heavy ores long distances, perhaps to the Adriatic.
While there was transfer of goods between the Adriatic and the other side of the Alps, the Slovenian wheel was probably more suitable for a two wheeled handcart to move things around the village - bringing firewood back from the woods, that kind of thing.
Most long distance ore transport would have been done by river and only that last little bit from the river or coast to the village would be done by animal, human, or (after they were invented) wagon.
@@DanDavisHistory Amazing response, thank you for clarifying that. So smelting was usually done on site or close nearby I'm assuming, ingots being somewhat more transferable.
Yes pretty much as close as possible. But they needed a lot of fuel for the smelting process so it was important to site the furnaces somewhere with long term access to wood / charcoal.
Surprisingly on some of the Aegean islands they might, perhaps, have brought ore from mines on nearby islands to the furnaces on another island. This is because the local geography meant prevailing winds rising up the steep slopes blasted air in to the furnaces. And they could only achieve this on one or two islands with steep slopes facing the prevailing wind.
And they can tell this because testing the slag at these sites gives results from more than one nearby island.
So yes the smelting was done as near as possible to the ore extraction but there were other factors to consider.
Greets from Canada. I heard about the Lake Superior copper getting halfway around the world for 9,000 years....
There is a strange tendency to want to believe conspiratorial theories rather than actually doing the work of reading real research and the real debates that exist between scholars of a subject.
Wait... Maybe not that strange, it's just laziness.
great stuff. Yeah I know alot of this already but everytime someone does a video or a article about the copper/tin mining or bronze smelting in ancient times I'm hooked and learn something new.
mikepette. The Great Orme copper mines have a website that you should find interesting. There are quite a few articles written about copper mining etc. There are academic sites on the internet that if you register with them you'll be able to either read or down load the the articles for free. Look for articles by Noel Gale, or Andres Hauptmann on the isotope analysis of the copper from the Uluburun shipwreck. For copper smelting in the UK, particularly in Wales, look for articles by Simon Timberlake.
There's also an excellent book on, Prehistoric copper mining in Europe 5500 - 500 BC written by William O'Brien.
For an excellent introduction to Bronze Age Europe then try The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age.
You might also want to look at the remains of the Bronze Age wreck sites off Salcombe in Devon, England and study the type of coastal sewn plank boats found in Britain.
One other thing to consider is that the Uluburun ship was not Minoan, as by circa 1327 BC the Mycenaean Greeks had taken over the Minoan maritime trade. Most probably it was either Mycenaean or Phoenician. 👍
Really cool to hear Michigan mentioned in one of your videos, I live there! Obviously copper is spread all throughout Michigan but a lot of it is in the Upper Peninsula. The Native Americans in the area called the Upper Peninsula something like, "Land of Trees" because all that was there to them was forests. It wasn't until the 1800's that a geologist from the US was sent up north to survey the land and he found so much copper and iron that some was open to the air when he saw it.
Wow. What a brilliant documentary. Well done
Exactly how accurate is the trace metal fingerprint (signature)? Can two mines geographically separated still produce similar signatures? Could you display side by side graphs to demonstrate the difference between Great Lakes copper ore and Welch copper ore?
so the reason that isotopic signatures for various sources differ from eachother is that some of those isotopes (lead for instance) are subject to radioactive decay, which means that not only will the original ratios be different from outcrop to outcrop when they're first formed geologically, but the older ones will have had longer for certain elements to have decayed into other elemental isotopes. Equifinality is basically impossible because of that, especially if you're using multiple isotopic signatures.
yes lol
You should do a video on flint and stone swords that were being made as bronze and copper tools a weapons tech spread. There are amazing stone weapons that look like their metal counterparts.
Mediterranean copper coming from the Great Lakes? I feel brain cells committing suicide just hearing that string of words is it possible? Welll yes about as possible as me becoming a multiple millionaire simply by buying one lottery ticket each week .
I love your closing statement!👍
Thanks for the honest content and clean narration!
Dang. I wish time team would go excavate some of these sites. I’d love to see what they found. Very interesting topic. I had no idea Cyprus was a mining site. I only ever thought of their trees
It would take a bit longer than three days
Thank you so much for uploading this video. It is helping me get through the pandemic!
Get ready for the angry tinfoil hat crowd! and thanks for the shout out!
Thank you for your videos. It's great to see a professional explaining their work and archaeology generally.
@@DanDavisHistory much appreciated. I'm hoping to have time to get back to that once this damn thesis gets submitted.
There's multiple copper and tin mines in Europe and Asia. And we can mass spec the artifacts and dictate exactly which mine is came from
Bronze age European ships couldn't sail across the Atlantic. Even when traveling across the Mediterranean they stayed close to the coast. They also couldn't hold many supplies for the crew (another reason for staying close to land) so even if they somehow reached America they wouldn't be able to fill the ships with both copper and enough food for the journey back
Tiger GamingGR. Yes, you are perfectly correct on that. I recently had to email Professor Pulak, who conducted the excavation on the Late Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck, to fact check something I'd found in one of these pseudo archaeology books claiming that the Minoans sailed to America. He also pointed out that while it may have been possible on a reasonably calm day, the fact that the Uluburun ship had only a keel plank as opposed to a fully developed keel, along with a sail that would not have allowed the ship to sail into the wind, makes the idea a non starter.
As for the two "reconstructions" that have been made and sailed, and rowed, around the Mediterranean, well let's put it this way, the reconstruction of one of the (Minoan), Thera ships from the frescos (circa 1600 BC), is based solely on the image and then designed on a computer. That's bad enough, but then they have it being made to use oars. The fresco shows the occupants paddling! Anyone want to try paddling across the North Atlantic?
The other "reconstruction" was of the Uluburun ship (circa 1320 BC). This is not a Minoan ship as the Mycenaeans had taken over the Minoan sea trade by then. The amount of actual ships hull timbers still remaining was approx 3 %. They then based their reconstruction on an image of one of the Egyptian ships used in the Red Sea to travel to Punt. So yet again, it's not going to be accurate.
The idea of people traveling from the Mediterranean to the Great Lakes is simply a non starter, no matter how much people want to believe otherwise.
Even if they could, and they were known (which they weren't) it wouldn't have been economically rational to do so because there were sources closer at hand that could be extracted or traded for at far lower cost.
@@melrichardson7709 People that use the word "pseudo" in their arguments are always entirely wrong.
@@adambane1719 Interesting comment Adam. Would you like to expand on it further.😊
From the Oxford Dictionary, " supposed or purporting to be but not really so; false; not genuine," also " resembling or imitating (pseudo-language; pseudo-science)."
@@melrichardson7709 The dictionary meaning is "your head is soooo far up your own arsehole, that you are the solo explorer of a 'hole' new world"
I was wondering what the old mines were like for the first people to use ores, I looked it up and this video just appeared, I am satisfied
I can't decide if people who claim things like this (copper from the Americas), and flat earthers, are just trolling on such a high level that they never give away the joke, or if they are actually that silly.
Unlike the flat earthers there is actually evidence of copper coming from America to the Med.
@@Jarlemoore1 Oh, where? Scientific evidence? Edit: I am fine with being corrected, so have at it :)
They're either gods of gods of trolling or idiots. My money is on the latter.
Only an idiot would think that it’s difficult to sail from Europe to America.
@@Ck-zk3we Thanks for making it so incredibly easy to discount what you and your side are putting forth as an intelligent argument. Good lord what a statement. Just wow.
Here is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
I live on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan, USA,, aka The Copper Country. Although copper is not currently mined here, there is a well documented history of modern and ancient copper mining. The great majority of copper deposits here are native copper - almost pure copper.
As a historian and tour guide I have heard many people talk about this theory that our copper went to Europe. Especially that it was Europeans who mined it. No evidence to support it. Zero.
A lot of the unsupported thinking comes from some calculations done decades ago by some investigators. They counted the known ancient mining pits and multiplied that number by "their" estimate of how much copper could have been removed from the average pit. This resulted in a huge amount of copper - many millions of pounds. Proponents of the North America export across the Atlantic theories compare that huge amount of copper to the amount found so far in ancient North American sites - a much lower figure. So, there is *Missing Copper*! This seems to be the main "evidence" that NA copper went to people on other continents.
Thank you, Jim. Yes that about sums it up. There is also a history of archeological hoaxes and forgeries dating back to at least the late 19th century and reinvigorated in the 1970s arguing for prehistoric transatlantic contact and this is layered on top of the ancient copper mining misunderstandings.
Great job. I guess I took for granted that I always knew there was plenty of copper. Now the tin, that was the good stuff.
Could you name/link the music used? Would love to know! Thank you for making these videos.
Yes I intended to do so, I will add them to the description when I can.
@@DanDavisHistory awesome, thank you!
@@NoHairMan the music is now listed in the video description.
@@DanDavisHistory You are awesome tyvm!
The NG . Provide evidence that metal smelting has its own original placement in different time periods in various historical places. So that means melting of metal happened spasmodically in various places.
Nibiru people took most of the metal from Earth for the Anunaki to use in repairing there spaceships.
They'll be along next week to pick up the rent.
Honestly though, sometimes I get a kick out of these weird ideas.
I LOVE this channel. Thank you for your scholarship!
Sad to see outlandish theories like this get touted around even in the age of the internet. A quick google search would tell you very quickly why anyone in eurasia would have no need for copper from another continent. Even the much rarer tin wasn't rare enough to warrant the search that far out. I can't stress enough how sad it is to see people not using the greatest library in the world being used for the most unimportant reasons.
such a good video and info. they have applied similar analysis to ancient silver coins and the copper and lead traces in them. They try to figure out what mines the metal for the coins came from. Some stuff about 2nd punic war era coins.
These stories are always fun to think about but don't stand up when you apply any real thought to it, there'd be mountains of evidence if there really had been a transatlantic copper mining and trading operation going on.
There is evidence of such but academics have closed minds.
Oh you mean a clay tablet with Minoan Linear A writing on it that was found in Michigan 5 years before Sir Author Evans discovered the Minoan civilization on Crete and it's Linear A language is something to think about, you know it's kind of hard to fake something that no one knew about yet so basically the Minoans had to be there.
@@Jarlemoore1 can't find anything about that googling it mate, you got a link?
@@Jarlemoore1 You know that academics get more and bigger grants for new ideas and new evidence.
@@Jarlemoore1 Show me the evidence. A google search? A link? A book?
Great channel, can't wait to delve into the novels. Love the narration too.
Very interesting. Love the way you added detail about the amount bronze tools on farmsteads in Northern Europe.
Subscribed!
Thank you, welcome to the channel. I hope you like the other videos.
Thank you for a really informative and educational response to these claims from outer space. 🙏👍
At first I was quite skeptical of the idea of engaging with a conspiracy theory, and a particularly silly one in this case, but I thought that was very well done and this has to be one of your best video. I guess a nice topic to explore now would be bronze age building techniques.
Just wow. This feels like an overly specific video because of the amount of detail from something so long ago. I loved it.
Thank you, Dan! We need more fake history debunking these days!
Malls are great places to shop; I can find everything I need under one roof.
They got it from Ea-Nasir, duh.
It was incredibly shitty copper.
lol
now I'm stuck trying to figure out an oxhide/oxide pun
Right now all the Robert Sepehr fans are calling on the magical powers of vril to lay a mighty curse upon Dan Davis
Or performing some Aryan sex-magic using their RH- blood in their inner-Earth tunnels.. hahaha!!
Ooh ouch, that said, 😉I bet some of them are.
A few years ago while doing some research about the Shanidar cave copper pendant which is 11,000 years old, I found out copper ore while not as abundant as many raw materials used during that period is sometimes found on the surface and in caves is very distinctive and relatively easy to spot. The main problem I see with this is that we forget that animals as distant from us as crows are attracted to shiny things and when copper ore is struck with an impact of a solid object leaves a dusty substance and becomes clearer which would be noteworthy for our neolithic ancestors obsessed with fertility and beads as it can be hammered and polished and it doesn't look like most things found in nature out there in the open by those times.
You really made a silk purse out of a sow's ear with this excellent video. Jeepers, there are some awful weirdos on the internet. Everybody knows my auntie Edith von Däniken built the pyramids on her day off. Fact.
Thank you.
You evidently haven't seen all the evidence which shows this to be true, just because academics have their heads in their assess and follow a certain path of ignorance doesn't mean that history is always what we they want us to think it is.
@@Jarlemoore1 "have their heads in there asses".
You must be a real archeological professional. Is that how you write in the journal articles you publish?
Edith is ignored by historians because she is a woman. Fact. 🤨
Thank you, thank you, thank you- I'd say that's pretty comprehensive.
Why would Europeans need to go to America for copper when there is plenty of copper allready in Europe? What they were short of was tin.
A new source of copper would have been like gold to them, imagine the Minoans having sole access to hundreds of tons of copper that no one else had.
@@Jarlemoore1 Copper ore deposits are quite common in Europe. It was mined all over the place. The metal that was in short supply in the bronze age was tin, not copper. Tin was only available from a few places, the most important of which was Cornwall.
@@Tugela60 Yes copper are quite common, tin was the big problem.
@@Tugela60
True but those copper deposits and mines would have been closely guarded by the empires that ruled the area, if a new source of copper was found that no one had claim to don't you think the Minoans or anyone for that fact would go for it even if the risk of sailing so far was very high?
@@Jarlemoore1 Maybe they got their copper from the copper islands, in other words Cyprus (which is what the name means), the place they lived?