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Early
Places Without and With Metals |
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Logic dictates that somebody,
sometime, and somewhere used a metal, most likely copper, for the first time. Unfortunately, he or she did not
record that "first" for posterity. The ancient inventor probably did
not consider his deed to be something very special, not to mention that writing
hadn't been invented yet.
All we have is therefore what trained archaeologists (or untrained treasure
hunters) dug out of the ground somewhere. We must discard all objects not
"scientifically" excavated in almost all cases because we just don't
know exactly where they come from and how old they are. |
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We also must treat objects excavated
by early archaeologists with some care because these guys may not have properly
recognized what they found. When Napoleon's
"archaeologists" started
digging and collecting stuff in Egypt, it wasn't clear to everybody that lead
(Pb),
graphite (C)
or galena (PbS) were completely different things, and the lead - galena
confusion survived to some extent
until modern times.
Modern archaeometallurgy right now is cleaning up the mess left by hundreds of
years of misunderstandings, wrong guesses or just plain mistakes made by
well-meaning but not always knowledgable archaeologists. It's not easy and in
many cases definite answers cannot be given. One simply cannot determine the
exact age of an old copper or bronze object.
C14 dating won't work, and no other
methods are known. For iron containing some carbon (i.e. for steel), C14 dating
might work but it is not a simple task. Dating thus is always tied to where,
exactly, the object was found; i.e. in
which layer of a know stratification. |
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What I will do here is to look at
some of the oldest presently known
archaeological sites where metals have been found. In all but one case we deal
with native copper, picked up "from the ground". In order to put the
findings in context, we also need to look at comparable places where no metals have been found. One might ask why the
metal-less ancient cultures did not pick up
available native copper and gold and made something from it, considering that
other cultures, not all that different, did just that a little later. One might
argue that the stuff simply was not available in the immediate environment of
the metal-less old towns, and that is certainly a good reason. However, even
the very oldest organized cultures or societies covered in the links above did
some long-distance trading, acquiring things that were not easy to find in
their own stomping grounds, for example bright green copper ores like
malachite, or sea shells. One might guess that nobody then used native metals.
All these places were centers of the "Neolithic revolution", the
period when humans changed their life-style from being hunters and gatherers to
settling down. Domesticating animals like pigs, sheep and goats started, and so
did agriculture by cultivating and breeding crops like wheat, emmer or barley
(for making beer). That triggered new
developments in other areas, too. If you can't go out hunting with the boys
anymore but have to stay at home most of the time, the most urgent business for
the men is to keep the females happy (and busy). Colorful
jewelry thus predates
advanced technologies, like making pottery in kilns, or metallurgy. In fact,
most of the very first metal objects found were copper beads used for
jewelry. |
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In the lists above I therefore start
with some early places were no metals have
been found. Notice that I don't say that no metals shave been used. In some places just a few tiny copper pearls
have been found - in a space that covers a large area and several hundred
years. Not finding something does not
necessarily means it wasn't there under these circumstances.
Most of the early places I cover are in Anatolia and some of these places have
been found just recently, causing major sensations and plenty of speculations.
While I give you a lot or piecemeal information, the link provides for a very
readable article "History of Mining and Metallurgy in Anatolia" that
puts it all together.
The authors are well-known archaeometallurgists who we have met several times
already: Ünsal
Yalçýn and Hadi Özbal. The article can be found in the
Net without a quotation; I hope the authors forgive me for including it
here. |
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The following graph gives a
time line on the towns covered
in the links. Note that the dating (typically "C14 technology") is uncertain to some extent; every
source seems to give slightly different times. If in doubt, I picked a kind of
average. |
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I have also included a rough
draft of the average temperature during the time slot involved; it is based on
the results form the ice-core drilling in Greenland (a complete and correct
curve is given in this link). The average
temperature in Anatolia is certainly not well represented in this graph, but
the general trend should be right. The rise in the average temperature around
13 000 BC is the reason for the neolithic
revolution, i.e. the transition from (migrating) hunters and gatherers
to sedentary farmers and animal keepers. |
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| Time line of early settlements mostly in
Anatolia and Copper finds |
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Finally, here is a
map of Turkey with the locations of these places. A related map showing the
"fertile crescent" is
here. |
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© H. Föll (Iron, Steel and Swords script)
With frame
General Remarks to Literature and Sources