a new spin on how Indigenous societies operated...
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Spin indeed. As no one can say what happened to the 250 million tons of 98% pure copper ore. Another guess by an archeologist out to find grant money to live on by proving a theory while disregarding major facts.
For comparison: modern mined copper ore is ~3% pure.
The copper mining in the UP ended perhaps a century ago, after the ores were no longer economical. There are still those large pure samples that are off-limits to “collectors”, but they were and are hard to spot, since the boulders they’re in are stony on the outside.
Regarding the trade in copper, which is known because of impurities and isotopes and such, my guess is, as happened east of the Atlantic, there was at least one and probably more than one culture that developed and thrived on long-distance trade, both overland and by sea. The Caribbean islands were *not* settled by people arriving on foot.
Also, there’s this:
https://search.brave.com/search?q=mayans+in+georgia%3F