http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== < Main Page Chapter 10 The Beginnings of Metallurgy in Europe People first came into contact with metals when they noticed surface ores and collected them as interesting and unusual forms of stones that were both malleable and brightly-coloured. The green of malachite and the blue of azurite copper ores and the gleam of gold nuggets would have been irresistible especially when craftsmen discovered that they could hammer them into useful and decorative objects like little knives, beads and tubes as craftsmen did at Çatal Hüyük in Turkey as early as 7000BC. This became a common practice in areas where native copper outcropped on the surface. Some of the graves in a cemetery at Cernica near Budapest dating from c5320 to 5210BC contained numbers of hammered copper beads. It would not have been long before it was noticed that heating the ores made the job of shaping the stones easier. Craftsmen in eastern Europe and Asia also found that the attractive substances could be ground up into a powder and applied as a surface colour to their better-quality and higher-fired pottery. The step-up from the cold-working of metal ores and true metallurgy was the discovery of the smelting technique that extracts the metal from the ore. In the case of the copper ores this requires a temperature of between 700 and 800 degrees C. After that, if temperatures of 1000 degrees C. can be reached the resulting molten metal can be cast into simple open moulds. Gold can be cast in the same way, although there is no need for preliminary smelting. Recent investigation by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation working in co-operation with Chinese archaeologists in N.W. China has discovered two sites where copper smelting had begun as early as 2135BC. A range of manufactured copper objects were tested for age at two sites in the region which is now desert, having apparently been desertified by the early metallurgists who cut down the trees for fuel. Before that time wheat had been grown and horses and sheep reared. Archaeologists believe that metallurgy may have been discovered at a number of sites but so far this area is the earliest known. (ANSTO) The technology needed to achieve high temperatures was already being employed by eastern European potters around 4500BC who were also familiar with copper and other metallic ores like the natural ferric oxide, haematite. A similar level of technology had been reached by potters in areas of the Middle East so, in theory, metallurgy could have developed in many places where copper ores or gold were available. One place where it did develop was in the lower Danube basin amongst the people of the later Vinça culture, a highly successful neolithic society tilling the fertile loess soil and living in tell-villages like Karanovo and Vinça itself. A mining site at Rudna Glava in Serbia has been excavated in which was exploited, around 4500BCE, seams of copper that ran ten metres underground. Ai Burnar is a similar site near Karanovo. At Varna on the Black Sea, graves containing masses of copper and gold objects have been unearthed and this discovery is now matched by excavations into burial mounds at Dabene, a place eighty miles east of Sofia where over 15,000 gold artefacts - beads and hair decorations - have been found and Duran Kalek, also on the Black Sea, with 142 golden objects. Recent discoveries suggest that, by 4300BCE, a stratified, hierarchical society was already in being in this area, based perhaps on the wealth that the command of metallurgy had brought. Small settlements were in existence with two-storey, partly stone-built houses, and some defended settlements, one more than four hectares in extent. The gold was panned from rivers in the Carpathian and Sredna Gora mountains and a recent hypothesis wonders whether the gold at Mycenae or even at Troy came from these or similar sources in Bulgaria. Some support for this idea has recently come from the `Valley of the Kings', seventy-miles east of Sofia where a cemetery of large tumuli cover stone-built chambers containing burials accompanied by golden grave goods amongst which recent discoveries included a cache of 15,000 tiny beads similar to those discovered by Schliemann at Troy but of superior craftsmanship. A site recently excavated is at Plocnik in southern Serbia where a Neolithic site was occupied between 5400 and 4700BC. The site yielded numerous clay figurines, houses with stoves and evidence that the occupants slept on woollen mats and fur, made clothes of wool, flax and leather, kept animals and exploited local hot springs for bathing. Evidence for metalworking came in the form of a sophisticated metal workshop with walls built out of wood coated with clay. The furnace, built on the outside of the room, featured earthen pipe-like vents with hundreds of tiny holes in them and a prototype chimney to ensure air went into the furnace to feed the fire and came out safely. Metal tools, including a copper chisel, a two-headed hammer and an axe, were found alongside stone implements After this early outburst of metallic technology there was little progress in Europe for some time then copper objects started being made in eastern Switzerland and southern Germany by the earlier fourth millenium The most dramatic evidence for a date comes from tests on the 'iceman' discovered on the border between Italy and Austria near the Austrian town of Vent. The unfortunate fellow had been benighted in an Alpine valley and died in the snow around 3300BCE. Most of his tools were of flint but amongst them was a copper axehead. Tests on copper axeheads show that in practice they are no more durable than flint axeheads and. examination of the Vent find shows that it was highly polished and reinforces the idea that they were primarily status symbols. Excavations at Pyrgos/Mavroraki near Limassol in Cyprus have uncovered evidence around 2000BC of copper and bronze manufacture using olive oil to fuel the processes in a complex in which the metal workshops were arranged around a large olive press. At the same place, other industries were producing wine, silk, perfumes, medicine and coloured cloth dyed with purple and blue indigo for export. (Report by the excavator, Maria Rosario Belgiorno) This information suggests that Cyprus was one of the hubs of Early-Middle Bronze Age trade in the eastern Mediterranean. In the Mitterberg area of Austria large-scale mining of copper was underway before 2000BC together with smelting of ores in sophisticated kilns. Traces of the ancient mines can still be seen running for kilometres across the countryside and the poisoned soil of the smelting areas, still treeless after four thousand years, scar the surrounding slopes today. Copper ore here was not pure but mixed with arsenic, an inclusion that produced a harder metal. This technology was understood and mastered by the smiths in eastern Europe during the mid fourth millennium BCE and areas further to the west were in receipt of some of the products of the technology but the process itself was not learned in western Europe and the British Isles before the mid-third millennium when production of arsenical-copper became a major industry from 2500 to 2000BCE Communal Tombs [LINK] main page [LINK] The Expansion of Farming [LINK]