Lake Superior Global Copper trade

This is a realistic update on current thinking regarding the Lake Superior antique copper mines.  Understand that i have posted on this for twenty years because it is also obvious.  Native copper is the dominant mineral here and this is the only place on Earth that this is actually true in terms of sustainable volumes.

you can also trace the safe path to europe as well.  Collect the ore in Lake superior, transport down river to poveety point for processing into ingots, ship to bimini to collect the annual fleet for the run to Lewis, then back down the Irish sea to Bristol for tin, and then south to Gibaulter or Tartusses and access to Mediterraean markets.  Return was directly west from here to bimini which why Columbis was directed southwest into the Carribean.

Flow generally stopped around 1159 BC and all copper inventories in europe were naturally subsumed in multiple steps of copper remelting with local copper from the vastly common sulphide ores.  Yet the trade route itself remained open to bring in brass from Georgia unti post columbis.

I assert that this is what surely happened and slowly archeological evidence is appearing to supoort this.  It is already amply as this post makes clear.  just too much copper was mined and it naturally went somewhere.  The blocal market consumed only a bit.

what is new is that Otzis copper axe was sourced from Lake superior and not actually from reduction of any local copper sulphide ores in the time and place.  This places shipping one thousand years before the Great Pyramid where quality bronze tools were needed.  So we have a hard time line without guessing.  

It is also true that native metal exploitation took place from the getgo when we have an 8000BP date for sulphide processing in lake Supetior.  By the by, this was mostly by gathering teams, because agriculture was too difficult here.  However large scale mining is at least 6000 years old.  But certainly Isle royale was safe and easy.  Even canoes could make the run out throgh the Chicago area and through to Poverty Point.  WE can actually then assume copper found its way to Europe even 6000 BP.  All this conforms to my own expected time lines..

This hugely opens up the actual extent of the time line and its centrality in terms of global trade for a known 2000 to 5000 years span.

Recent discoveries in America have uncovered something astonishing. A culture who mined and worked metal over 10,000 years ago. This is The Old Copper Culture. But that date just doesn’t make sense.. That’s FAR earlier than metallurgy appears in Europe and possibly earlier than anywhere else in the world! But the mystery goes even deeper - Because no-one knows where all this metal went... Join me for a chat in my Discord server! 👉 / discord For weekly ramblings, join my FREE email list below 👇 https://michael-button.kit.com/signup Let me know what you think in the comments, and thank you for watching!!

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