What's the difference between a handaxe and a Folsom point?

[Charlie Hatchett]

http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~ ... 15CH4.html

Bronze Age History. Interesting time frame consistant with Isle Royle.
It's possible that early European's may have been mining copper and tin
from here. Perhaps they also needed the timber supply. Once iron comes
into production, it surpassed the desire for copper and tin.


Has anybody read this:
http://www.geocities.com/howthesungod/

I just found that under:
http://www.angelfire.com/me/ij/books.html

while doing a Google search for "Bronze Age Smelting Evidence"

Darn the more you look into this, there is a lot of data on
iron ore smelting furnaces being used in Ohio for copper smelting.
Vikingin bog iron smelting furnaces and etc. The list goes on.

There's a lot more evidence for prehistoric metal working in the Great Lakes region than most are aware of:

http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/

[Digit]

Haven't found much more than Roberto posted Charlie. The interesting point on my earlier post is of course the dates when mining started and finished as they correspond very well with the Bronze Age in Europe and the Middle East.
If there was a good profit in the trade then I don't doubt somebody would have latched onto it. If Copper was shipped across the Atlantic I imagine the price at this end would have been very high indeed, perhaps this would have been one of the driving forces behind the move to Iron which was much more plentiful over here than Copper.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Haven't found much more than Roberto posted Charlie. The interesting point on my earlier post is of course the dates when mining started and finished as they correspond very well with the Bronze Age in Europe and the Middle East.
If there was a good profit in the trade then I don't doubt somebody would have latched onto it. If Copper was shipped across the Atlantic I imagine the price at this end would have been very high indeed, perhaps this would have been one of the driving forces behind the move to Iron which was much more plentiful over here than Copper.

That and iron is much harder.

[Roberto]

http://www.onlinenewsarchive.com/scienc ... rse_38879/

Here's an interesting article. Still doing the Google search for
smelting and Solutrean information.
CHEERS...

[Charlie Hatchett]

Good stuff, Roberto. Appreciate your efforts. Wormington makes note of horse bones in direct association with Old Copper Culture artifacts, in her 4th edition of "Ancient Man in North America".

This was quoted in the article you posted:

"1954 The Old Copper Assemblage and Extinct Animals. 'American Antiquity' 20:169-170."

I'll see if I can track it down.

P.S.- We had a discussion earlier in the "Supernova" thread about how 14C dates seem to be off in the Great Lakes region. I'll see if I can track that down also.

[Cognito]

Interesting time frame consistant with Isle Royle.
It's possible that early European's may have been mining copper and tin
from here. Perhaps they also needed the timber supply. Once iron comes
into production, it surpassed the desire for copper and tin.

Interesting coincidence ... who was able to negotiate successful and consistent trade across the Atlantic as early as 2,750bce?8)

http://www.angelfire.com/me/ik/britishBA.html

I am referencing the British Bronze Age since the isles would have been the continental landing/waypoint.

[Digit]

Can I now stir the pot after that article of Roberto's?
So we are looking at a sufficiently large group of people to organise mining, distribution, housing, feeding, etc etc on site of a sizeable enterprise anywhere between 10 and 20000yrs ago.
I read once that hunter gather groups established themselves in an area capableof supporting them indefinitely and population pressure caused them to spread at about 15 miles/generation.
Is that correct? I don't know, but assuming that it is how long would it take for a small number of people crossing into NA to reach a sufficient population density to support the above scenario.
Even if part of the above is correct Clovis is again looking to be a late comer.

[Digit]

Point there Cog is that the British Isles was the main source of Tin for the European Bronze Age for many years, and that could mean that the business men of the day could could offer a complete package.
The amount of Copper used in the past must have been colossal if you look at the amount that was removed from Cyprus before their stocks ran out.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Here's bit of the abstract:

The Old Copper Assemblage and Extinct Animals. American Antiquity 20:169-170.

Quimby analyses an occurrence of deeply buried copper artifacts and associated animal bones near Fort Williams in southwest Ontario. The discovery, made in 1913 and 1916, was recorded in a geological report. Quimby reasons that the site may date to the Altithermal, approximately 3500-2000 B.C., and that the bones are those of bison and the extinct native horse.

Does anyone have access to JSTOR:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7 ... 0.CO%3B2-9

Still searching...

[Digit]

Just how many inconvenient fact and ideas have been ignored?

[Charlie Hatchett]

Seems many "researchers" of the past generation liked nice, neat stories (Clovis-first, for example). Metallurgy in NA occuring contemporaneously with metallurgy in the Old World apparently didn't fit into this nice and neat story. Note that even 50 years later, it's rarely discussed in academic circles. No rebuttal, no criticism, no nothing...just ignored.

[Digit]

In wartime the first casualty is said to be the truth, but with a scientific discipline supposedly dedicated to the truth there is moral obligation to that truth.
The destruction of the wealthy class in the UK has had the downside of replacing them with paid politicians and paid scientific staff, rather than amateurs, and there the rot set in.

[Minimalist]

What's the difference by a handaxe and a Folsom point?

I was thinking about the original question and finally the answer came to me.

The difference is that there ARE Folsom points in North America!

[Cognito]

Point there Cog is that the British Isles was the main source of Tin for the European Bronze Age for many years, and that could mean that the business men of the day could could offer a complete package.
The amount of Copper used in the past must have been colossal if you look at the amount that was removed from Cyprus before their stocks ran out.

Digit, I am familiar with the tin mines of Cornwall; however, in addition to re-posing my original question "Who would have the capacity to orchestrate trans-Atlantic trade during the Bronze age?", I will now further burden you with the following: "When did the Cyprus copper stocks run out?"

[Minimalist]

On a more serious note, about archery.

It seems like using and surviving with an atlatl would be a massive skill in and of itself. This is not an Olympic competition, accuracy means more than distance if you want to eat that night.

So, not only would the inventor of the bow have to demonstrate its superiority to the atlatl he would have to convince the other hunters that the advantage gained is of such a nature as to merit the expenditure of time in learning the skill.

Further, just attaching a string to a stick doesn't do much. A bow requires a certain technique to manufacture. Trying to sell a very primitive bow to an experienced group of atlatl hunters might not be so easy as you imagine.

It is probably not generally known but even the Romans did not employ large numbers of archers during the early Republican period. They did, however, use formations of slingers, either their own recruits or mercenaries from i.e., the Balearic Islands. Archers were more known in the East, where Cretan and Syrian archers were useful mercenaries but it seems that the bow had developed among these cultures far earlier than it did in the West. By the Early Imperial period the Romans had overcome their reluctance to train archers and recruited them as auxilliaries...but the Romans were not averse to stealing any ideas they thought were useful. In that, they may have been more pragmatic than the stone age cultures which had to decide between working on a new skill and eating that night.