Better keep a close eye on it with all the copper thieves running around these days.
GGG pingy thingy.
Interesting
Isle Royale is an excellent place to go backpacking.
Michigan copper mining history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_mining_in_Michigan
I’m kind of shocked to see a new mining project is getting started up there. (Nickel and copper)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_mine_project
They dont call it the Copper Country for no reason.
In the Caledonia mine, they dug out a mass that weighed in at about 27 tons. You can still go up there and hunt for pure copper nuggets laying around on top of the ground. Divers have come back and said they saw massive outcroppings underwater in the big lake.
In gold, the michigan mine, was said to have produced the highest per ton to ounce ratio in history. It pinched out fast and they closed to mine. Yet nobody has ever bothered to drill test holes to see if they got it all.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting this. I think I remember Barry Fell postulating trade with the eastern Mediterranean. Are there any isotopes in the copper or in the inclusions that could help further identify it as from North America?
Pre historic UPers?
“Only Michigan Copper is of this purity, and it is known to have been mined in enormous quantities during the Bronze Age....”
Uh...no.
There’s pits on the Keweenaw mined by unknown ancient miners, but they never mined “enormous quantities.”
You can see how these ancient miners chipped away at the “Ontonagon Boulder,” which is on display at the Smithsonian Institute. Now, we don’t know who these ancient miners were, and these ancient miners and their identity are a true mystery.
The “ancient miners” chipped away at the abundant float copper on the Keweenaw Peninsula, but it was never in any great quantities.
BTW, how the Ontonagon Boulder got to the Smithsonian is a Hollywood movie in itself.
It involves a gunboat battle with a US Army ship that chased a free-wheeling adventurer who owned a sailing vessel to the Sault locks, wheeling and dealing with Anishinabe natives, several gunfights, and the captain of a vessel who had the guts to take on the entire US government.
The captain eventually beat all odds and displayed the Ontonagon Boulder in Detroit for 10¢ a peek. He made a fortune.
We need people like that today.
This is a great book on the subject;
http://www.amazon.com/Cradle-Grave-Death-Superior-Copper/dp/0195083571
Interesting statement on paternalistic companies, and how socialistic costs drove them out of business.
Evidently the mines angled 12,000 feet down.
I spent some time on the Keweenaw Peninsula about 15 years ago. Beautiful area. Still ruins of mines at the time, buildings, and even trains on torn up track. Slag piles, and grated over mine holes that emit steam on cold days in the winter. Found an old grave yard while driving around and most everyone who died in the mines (most of the graves) were on average under 30 years old. Michigan Tech in Houghton Hancock was originally a mining school. I am really fascinated by the area.
I was a UPer (Yooper?) for eight years. Thanks for posting this. I must show this to my husband, who also is an ancient coin collector.
I think people got around more than we thought we did back then.
Now if it was tin that would be another thing. Tin was indeed rare and needed but copper was all over the place.
Those Greeks were everywhere before there was somewhere....
`The coasts of the mainland are inhabitated by Greeks living round a bay as large as the Maeotic, with its mouth nearly opposite that of the Caspian Sea.` [He bases it (``Face in the Orb of the Moon``) partly on beliefs current among the Celts of the British Isles, beliefs which can be traced among the Celtic Irish.
Furthermore he gives details of a crossing, in a much more specific and discussible form.`...
[Prior passage: `Far o`er the brine an isle Ogygian lies -distant from Britain 5 days` sail to the west there are three other islands, equidistant from Ogygia, and from one another, in the general direction of the setting sun...
Every thirtieth year, Sylla continues, when Saturn is in Taurus, men chosen by lot are sent forth in a flotilla of well-provisioned ships`]
`Now the forty-seventh parallel passes through the main outlet of the Gulf of St. Lawrence between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island,; and it also grazes north end of the Caspian, that portion of the inland sea which most Greeks imagined to be a channel or mouth opening into the circumambient Ocean.` [49]
(Taurus = ox)
300~ A.D. Three 4th century Diocletian coins were found in Iceland in modern times [50]
49. Ashe, Land to the West, pp.3, 176-182, cites Plutarch, (2), Chapter 26
50. Ashe, Land To the West
[Note ``there are three other islands, equidistant from Ogygia, and from one another`
(Could this refer to the 3 peninsulas of the Great Lakes which are equidistant more or less from each other?? The distance from one end of the Great Lakes to the other is the same as the distance from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.)
`The coasts of the mainland are inhabitated by Greeks living round a bay as large as the Maeotic, with its mouth nearly opposite that of the Caspian Sea.` [He bases it (``Face in the Orb of the Moon``) partly on beliefs current among the Celts of the British Isles, beliefs which can be traced among the Celtic Irish.
Furthermore he gives details of a crossing, in a much more specific and discussible form.`...
[Prior passage: `Far o`er the brine an isle Ogygian lies -distant from Britain 5 days` sail to the west there are three other islands, equidistant from Ogygia, and from one another, in the general direction of the setting sun...
Every thirtieth year, Sylla continues, when Saturn is in Taurus, men chosen by lot are sent forth in a flotilla of well-provisioned ships`]
`Now the forty-seventh parallel passes through the main outlet of the Gulf of St. Lawrence between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island,; and it also grazes north end of the Caspian, that portion of the inland sea which most Greeks imagined to be a channel or mouth opening into the circumambient Ocean.` [49]
(Taurus = ox)
300~ A.D. Three 4th century Diocletian coins were found in Iceland in modern times [50]
49. Ashe, Land to the West, pp.3, 176-182, cites Plutarch, (2), Chapter 26
50. Ashe, Land To the West
[Note ``there are three other islands, equidistant from Ogygia, and from one another`
(Could this refer to the 3 peninsulas of the Great Lakes which are equidistant more or less from each other?? The distance from one end of the Great Lakes to the other is the same as the distance from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.)
I have been to the mines on Isle Royale. It is a great place to backpack.
It has been known but not spoken of because many famous archaeologists' careers were made building the narrative that there was absolutely no cross Atlantic contact. Even the irrefutable viking sites were only grudgingly accepted after long years with the proviso that Viking occupation was necessarily temporary and had NO historical impact and was the only such contact possible or thinkable. Those who thought or think differently have found it harder to get digs financed.