Out Of The Fiery Furnace
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The stark and cluttered
landscape of the desert
free from distraction is
the place to appreciate two
things which man placed in harness.
Together they would yield
one of his greatest achievements.
They were the sun, warming the earth
with the energy upon which all life depends
and the rocks of which
the planet is made.
Some 10,000 years ago
mankind first applied
the energy of heat
to the elements of the earth
we know as metals,
locked up,
invisible, in the rocks.
That discovery changed
the landscape of history.
It began man's long and
revolutionary apprenticeship
to the fire, furnace, and forge
which has placed metals
at the foundation of
our present material society.
In our own astonishing time,
man has landed on the Moon,
where he conformed
to that ancient reflex.
The first thing he did was
pick up and study the rocks.
That view from space
and the huge range of
fresh archaeological discovery
is peeling away
history's old horizons.
It's possible to consider
the civilizations created by man
through a wider lens.
A salient feature emerges
from 10,000 years
of mining and metallurgy--
ever since metals began to make
their volatile contribution
to the flux of human affairs,
they have been a cause
and consequence
of our material life.
They've been determinants
of success or failure
among nations and states.
And those who've had
command of metals
have been the masters
of their age.
By prizing open the doors
to the vast treasure house
in the rocks,
man began to shake off
one of his
most remorseless constraints,
his daily struggle
for mere subsistence.
He crossed a great divide
from the stone age
into the Bronze Age.
"From Stone To Bronze"
The transition
from the Stone Age
into the Age of Metals
took place quite late
in human history.
In some parts
of the world,
a neolithic culture
has persisted
even into recent times.
A premetal society
still lingers on
in the desert
of central Australia.
This aboriginal quarry is
carpeted with flint chippings
from thousands of years
of toolmaking.
Although
the first Australians
occupied a continent
rich in minerals,
they made no practical use
of these ores
in their metallic form.
They satisfied
all their material needs
with what was
readily to hand.
In Australia, alone of
the inhabited continents,
the special properties
of mineral ores
went unrecognized.
Elsewhere, the discovery
of metals
seems to be associated with
the changes in human society
which took place
in many parts of the world
some 10,000 to 12,000
years ago.
The most significant
of those changes
was from the nomadic life
of hunting and food gathering
to settlement in communities.
The corollary of settlement
was the domestication of animals
and the cultivation of crops.
These advances meant
there was now time
for more
than simple survival,
time to think.
That was the springboard
for nearly all human progress
towards modern civilization.
The transition
did not take place everywhere
at the same time.
One of the first areas
where man began to settle down
was the Middle East,
the lands that linked
the continents Africa,
Europe, and Asia.
Discoveries
in the last 20 years
on the great
Anatolian plateau of Turkey
have provided the most
revealing insights so far
into those first habitations
of civilized man.
In archaeology, as in
other forms of history,
it's right to be wary of claims
to uniqueness or primacy,
but this vast mound
in Anatolia
is now
considered to conceal
the earliest town
in human history,
inhabited
8,500 years ago.
Excavations
have uncovered
12 successive levels
of building
over nearly 1,000 years--
from 6500 B.C.
to 5500 B.C.
Finds here provide a picture
of a highly developed society
without parallel
in the neolithic world
and one which,
for the first time,
appears familiar with metals.
These archaeological discoveries
of copper ores,
together with natural copper,
corroded green,
are a beginning.
More emphatic evidence of
developing metallurgical skills
is this copper mace head
found near Catal Huyuk,
dated to about 5000 B.C.
It is the earliest known example
of metal cast in molds.
these displays in the Museum
of Anatolian Civilizations
in Ankara
piece together life
as it must have been lived
in Catal Huyuk,
the oldest town in the world
which is known to us.
They show, too, that
by the 6th millennium B.C.,
neolithic people
invested a particular curiosity
in certain rarities
found on the earth's surface
among the stones
and rocks.
These things,
unlike the stones,
could even be hammered
into various shapes.
They were the first metals
to be used by men,
the so-called
native metals,
occuring in nature
in their pure state.
The most obvious ones
to neolithic men
were as they would be
to us today--
copper, like this piece
of native copper,
which was formed
in its molten state
in a fissure in the rock.
Alluvial gold,
and iron which fell
from the sky as meteorites.
The oldest metal objects
worked by human beings
all came from
that particular group.
But the supply
of native metals,
because it was both rare
and occured in isolation,
was soon exhausted.
But the aroused
human intellect was not,
and it contemplated
the next step,
which called for a huge
leap of imagination--
the discovery
of how to smelt metals
out of the rocks.
That advance, made long before
there was any understanding
of either physics or chemistry
or the elements,
is one of the most
far-reaching achievements
in all human history.
The blue-green ore of malachite
gives no hint of the red metal
which is locked up within it
and linked by strong
chemical bonds to oxygen.
To separate or reduce
the copper metal,
two conditions have to be met.
One is intense heat,
more than 1,000 degrees Celsius
for copper.
The other condition
for smelting copper from the ore
is an absence of oxygen,
what's called
a reducing atmosphere.
This atmosphere draws oxygen
from the heated oxide ore
and reduces the metal within
to its pure state.
It's a very exacting process,
and it's hard to believe
that neolithic man
at first set out deliberately
to contrive it.
It's more likely
to have been an accident,
where suitable metallic ores
might well perhaps have been
subjected haphazardly
to the two
necessary conditions--
one, intense heat,
and the other,
the absence of oxygen
in a reducing atmosphere.
One very plausible suspect
is obviously the campfire.
It's often been suggested
that early man must have,
albeit unknowingly,
built his campfires
on metal-bearing outcrops
or used lumps
of metallic ores
to make a fireplace
and next morning
might have found
unexplained blobs of metal
among the ashes.
The campfire theory
still has supporters,
but archaeo-metallurgists
look elsewhere.
For one thing, the temperatures
reached in an open campfire
are rarely more than
600 or 700 degrees Celsius.
The combustion gases create
only an intermittent
reducing atmosphere
above the coals.
It seems highly unlikely
that copper or iron,
the first metals
to have widespread use,
could have ever been smelted,
accidentally or otherwise,
in an open campfire.
But the conditions necessary
for smelting
did exist in one
of the first technologies
to emerge
in neolithic society.
For thousands of years
previously,
there had been containers of
wood, bark, leather, even stone,
but no material could be
worked and shaped
with the ease
and versatility of clay.
Pottery no doubt
had its origins
in the observation that wet clay
dries hard in the Sun.
The natural progression was to
accelerate that drying process
by heating the pots in fire.
Some 9,000
or 10,000 years ago,
man understood that
when clay was heated
to about 700 degrees Celsius,
it changed irreversibly.
The resulting
crystalline structure
was hard and waterproof.
Pots have survived
for thousands of years.
The search had begun
for less random
and more predictible results.
One improvement was to stack
the pots on top of the fuel
and cover them up
to keep in the heat.
It's a method still used
in many parts of the world,
as here in Rajasthan,
in northern India.
This led to a solution
which has lasted now
for millennia.
The appreciation
that a permanent cover
meant better control
of heat
brought the pottery kiln
into existence.
In a closed pottery kiln,
with its natural draft
and thick, heat-retaining walls,
temperatures in excess
of 1,000 degrees Celsius
could be maintained
for hours.
In the enclosed space,
the smoke
and carbon monoxide fumes
created a reducing atmosphere.
Two of the conditions necessary
for the smelting of metals
were present.
And so, on occasion,
was the third,
the metallic ores
themselves.
The proposition
that metal smelting
was an accidental discovery
in the potter's kiln
is based upon an accepted fact
that at about the same time
that smelted metals
first appear
in the archaeological record,
the potters were using
metallic ores
to paint colored patterns
on their pots.
These potters are working
at Jaipur in Rajasthan.
A good deal of Indian life
in towns and villages
is still in
this preindustrial state.
These men are using methods
and a kiln design
which are known
to be many centuries old.
Pigments are still made
by grinding colored ores
just as the peoples
of prehistory
made their body paints.
The glaze is made
by crushing a mixture of borax,
broken glass, and lead oxide.
The final coat of glaze,
when it's fired,
protects the painted design.
Overall,
and in its essentials,
this is a picture which can
have changed very little
in perhaps
thousands of years.
With the help of it,
we may plausibly imagine
a time far back
in history's mists
when the potters would not
have been painting
in this kind of detail,
but something
perhaps more rudimentary,
bolder smears and wipes
of metallic ores perhaps.
But then, as now,
they were using
a number of metallic ores
in decoration.
This part hasn't received
its white glaze,
but you can see
the bright yellow of antimony,
the green of chromium,
the blue of copper,
the rusty red of iron,
and the white of lead.
In the long hours of firing,
the metallic ores gradually
take on their final colors.
And when
the heat is at its maximum
and the kiln is filled
with carbon fumes,
the conditions for smelting
may have been met.
There can't be any certainty,
of course,
that this was how
the smelting process
first came
to be understood,
but the incubation
of metallic ores
in the enclosed heat
of the kiln
makes it an obviously
attractive possibility.
The reduction of lead
into globules like these
after pottery glaze
is fired here
is a frequent occurence.
After that,
it's only a short step
to imagine those inevitable
accidents and coincidences
which would have
revealed to the potter
the unexplained presence
of something
which hadn't been there
before the firing--
granules, perhaps, of metal.
Once he had reproduced that,
he would have seen
that the kiln itself
is not the ideal place
for the purpose.
Only parts of it
have a reducing atmosphere,
and the heat
is unevenly distributed.
By the 4th
or 5th millennium B.C.,
the imaginary forces
within people
were sufficiently aroused
for them to begin experimenting,
trying to find
all kinds of different ways
of applying heat
more directly to metallic ores.
They gave themselves up
more intensely
to the endless seduction which
has been exercised over men
by those gleaming substances
in the rocks.
The earliest indisputable
evidence of smelting
yet discovered
anywhere in the world
has been found here
in the arid wilderness
of the Sinai Desert
in southern Israel.
In 1960, an archaeologist,
Beno Rothenberg,
was exploring the dry wadis
of the Timna Valley
near the Gulf of Aqaba.
This is one of the historic
bridges of the ancient world,
on the pathway
between Africa and Asia.
at the foot of a hill,
Rothenberg found the ruins
of a very early habitation.
Nearby were stone tools,
apparently used for crushing
copper ore for smelting.
There were no obvious signs
of smelting near the ruins,
but Rothenberg looked on top
of the hill,
where the wind would help
to raise the heat
of any furnace fire.
He found scattered lumps
of smelting waste, or slag.
Some contained small prills,
or blobs of copper.
With the slag were flint tools
of the neolithic miners.
A team of archaeologists came.
What slowly emerged
from the stony ground out here
was this bowl-shaped furnace,
built up with large stones.
When the archaeo-metallurgists
dug down
to the floor of the furnace,
they found ashes.
Those ashes
have been carbon-dated
to the 4th millennium B.C.
This almost childishly simple
arrangement of stones
is the location of
a tremendous achievement.
It marks the earliest place
yet indentified
where man, without any knowledge
of physics or chemistry,
but armed only with
his curious intelligence,
first set out deliberately
to smelt copper
from the living rock.
The metalsmiths were still
not very good at the job.
But this historic site
at Timna
confirms that
by the 4th millennium B.C.,
man had advanced from gathering
native metals to smelting.
Other finds from this region
show that the techniques
of metal casting
had already reached a remarkable
level of sophistication.
In the early 1960s,
an Israeli expedition
began exploring caves
along the rock cliffs
facing the Dead Sea.
In one cave,
barely accessible,
they found, undisturbed,
the signs of human usage,
dating back to
the 4th millennium B.C.
Inside was a hoard
of strange metal objects
thrust into a crevice,
wrapped in cloth,
perhaps hastily hidden.
This find, from what they call
the cave of the treasure,
is now on display
in the National Museum
in Jerusalem.
It contains more
than 200 artifacts,
fashioned from copper
with consummate skill.
The objects
and their cloth wrapping
have been firmly dated
to at least 3000 B.C.
Nothing like them
from this period
is known from anywhere else
in the ancient world.
there's no clue to who
might have made
these highly polished shapes
or where they came from,
and their precise function
remains a mystery.
But the power and assurance
of their forms
speak for a growing mastery
over metals
at a time when stone
was still in general use
alongside copper.
When archaeological exploration
of the southern Sinai
was extended into the eroded
valleys around Timna,
it established a chronology
of mining and smelting
that extends right down
through the past 6,000 years.
Here, preserved by aridity
and isolation,
is the most detailed record of
the earliest mining for metal
available to us
anywhere in the world.
The prize was malachite,
a copper ore
that occurs here as nodules
in the soft sandstone.
By the 2nd millennium B.C.,
these activities
had greatly expanded
as the pharaohs of Egypt
colonized all Palestine.
The Egyptians
recruited their miners
from the Biblical tribes
of Midian.
The Midianites left the imprint
of their ancient labors
on the shafts and drives.
Here, they dug out the wealth
which helped to sustain
the pharaohs of the New Kingdom.
The scale of these
Egyptian smelting operations
is suitably impressive.
Hundreds of people worked
at scores of furnaces here.
The London Institute
of Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies
is investigating
Egyptian technique
on these ancient sites,
recreating in the Sinai Desert
copper smelting as it
must have been carried out
under the pharaohs
4,000 years ago.
The furnace itself is made
from local clay,
identical
to those found here,
packed around
with stones and sand.
These, then,
were the techniques
which kept the temperature
inside the pharaoh's furnaces
close to 1,100 degrees
for hours on end.
The application of forced draft
to smelting
was a crucial advance
in the endless search
for more heat, more energy,
that persisted through
the history of metals.
And the other stuff?
Three kilograms
of hematite
to one kilogram
of copper ore.
After six hours firing,
there's a good depth
of molten metal.
The furnace can now be tapped
to run off the lighter slag
and leave the heavier
copper metal
in the furnace base.
The amount of copper won
will not be known
until the furnace
cools down overnight
and can be opened up.
In this instance,
the copper has failed
to separate from the slag,
but the smelt
has achieved enough
to prove the process works.
At Luxor, on the Upper Nile,
the grandeur of the ruins
speaks for the power and scale
of the Egyptian empire.
In a village near the Valley
of the Kings,
an extraordinary account
survives
of daily life in the New Kingdom
in the 2nd millennium B.C.
Beneath the hillside lies
the Tomb of Rekhmire,
a Lord Chamberlain
under the pharaohs
of the 18th dynasty.
The crowded scenes
on the walls
are a documentary
of Rekhmire's times
and of
his responsibilities.
One scene shows in detail
the casting of a pair
of large temple doors.
Metal arrives in two forms--
baskets of small ingots,
and a large, flat
slab of copper
shaped to make it easier
to carry on the shoulder.
Two sets of bellows
raise the furnace temperature
to the melting point of copper,
more than 1,000 degrees Celsius.
To the melting point of copper,
more than 1,000 degrees Celsius.
The crucible of molten metal
is lifted with poles.
The sap prevents them
from catching fire
long enough for the copper
to be poured into the mold.
The Rekhmire Tomb painting,
fresh and clear
after 3,500 years,
is one of the earliest
records we have
of metal casting.
It confirms that by
the 2nd millennium B.C.,
the technology of handling
copper on a large scale
was well advanced.
There are good reasons
why copper became
the first metal
to be widely used
and steadily replaced clay
and other materials.
Copper ores were often on
or close to the surface
of the earth.
The smelting of these ores
wasn't complicated,
and good quality copper
could be made consistently.
Markets across
the ancient world
were flooded with
copper utensils of all kinds.
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foreign language]
But when it came
to tools and weapons,
copper's softness
was a disadvantage.
Observation and experiment
produced a huge advance.
It was an observable fact that
copper smelted from ores
containing traces
of arsenic or other elements
was much harder
than pure copper.
A blend of copper and tin
was found to yield a metal
which was easy to cast,
extremely hard,
yet which could
still be hammered.
This alloy gave its name
to the first period
of metalworking--
the Bronze Age.
The durability of bronze
produced superior tools
and weapons,
which went hand in hand
with the rise of empires.
It yielded not only power,
but also aesthetic pleasure.
by 2000 B.C.,
most parts of the Middle East
were living in
the Age of Bronze,
as was
the island of Cyprus.
Cyprus lies
across the sea routes
of the eastern
Mediterranean.
That wasn't enough to give it
its brilliant place.
The fame of Cyprus arose from
its vast resources of copper.
The scale of the Bronze Age
metal industry on Cyprus
has been revealed
by excavations,
Like the city of Kition,
which lies buried
beneath the suburbs
of the modern township
of Larnaca.
Beside the great temples
and palaces,
there was
a flourishing industry
in copper smelting
and bronze casting.
Cyprus and this place
help to focus
an intriguing mystery
about Bronze-Age metallurgy.
The name itself, Cyprus,
has had the meaning of copper
for some 2,000 years.
There was always plenty
of copper here.
It's been mined
for millennia.
There was no tin
for making bronze.
There's no other
source of tin
anywhere else
close at hand.
So a long-distant
tin source seems likely,
and indeed a necessity,
but it has never
been identified,
although Cornwall, Iran,
and Afghanistan
have merits as candidates.
the underlying issue
the metallurgist
has to resolve is this--
How was it,
if there was no tin,
that the earliest
metal smelters
discovered
the properties of tin
as an alloy of copper
in making bronze?
Tin bronze may have been
discovered somewhere
where tin and copper are
found together,
but there are few places
where that occurs.
In none
has evidence been found
of early Bronze-Age metallurgy,
until recently.
Here's an instance where
the revelations of recent years
have mounted such an attack
upon the established view
of the ancient world.
Southeast Asia has
a long history of civilization.
As far as technology
is concerned,
it has been thought of
as a backwater.
The region is rich
in copper and tin,
but there was no evidence
of any use of them.
This view has been challenged
in the past 20 years
as a result of discoveries
made in northern Thailand
and in this village,
Ban Chiang.
Ban Chiang lies close
to Laos' border
and to Vientiane.
The Inhabitants of Ban Chiang
migrated from Laos
200 years ago.
They cleared the light bush
and settled down
to a rural subsistence.
Then, in 1966,
an American student working
on a road construction project
near the village
found some unusual pots
in a freshly dug cutting.
When these found their way
back to America,
together with bits
of corroded metal dug up nearby,
they aroused
intense curiosity.
Preliminary tests gave dates
which seemed impossibly early,
especially for
the metal objects.
The outcome was
that in 1974 and '75,
a joint excavation
was mounted
by the Thai
Fine Arts Department
and the University
of Pennsylvania Museum.
The team made discoveries
which shook the chronology
of prehistory
in Southeast Asia
and many long-held beliefs
of cultural development
in general.
What they found here was
a record of previous occupation
of the Ban Chiang site,
starting before 3000 B.C.
and ending about 250 B.C.
These dates
have been established
by carbon dating
of organic materials
and thermoluminescence tests
of the pottery.
The 18 tons
of artifacts recovered,
mainly burial furnishings,
are being studied in
laboratories around the world.
The most intriguing finds,
because of their dates,
are the metal pieces, under
examination in Philadelphia.
the earliest is this
cast-bronze spearhead,
from about 2000 B.C.,
found in
the lowest levels.
The archaeologists
were even more startled
by this spearhead.
A bronze socket
has been cast on to
a wrought iron blade.
The provisional date
is at the end of
the 2nd millennium B.C.,
an extraordinarily
early date
for such
a sophisticated technology.
The evidence
that these objects
were made locally
and not imported
includes a number of crucibles
with traces of bronze
still adhering
to the lining.
If the dates
of this excavation
stand up
to a final scrutiny,
they will place
the hitherto unknown
and unsuspected metalsmiths
of northern Thailand
on par with the most
advanced metalworkers
in the ancient world.
The result
of this excavation,
providing the dates come
to be more widely accepted,
will be simply iconoclastic.
It's been a long-established
tradition of scholarship
which has designated
Mesopotamia
and the valleys of the Tigris
and the Euphrates
as marking the beginning
of civilized advance--
the art of writing,
the first towns and cities,
the making of bronze--
and that that culture
then spread out
and was diffused
elsewhere on Earth.
Ban Chiang is like
a lightning flash
across
the archaeological world,
illuminating an academic war
between those
who continue to hold that
civilized culture did spread
and was diffused from that
original cradle in Asia Minor
and those who argue
for a local, independent
evolution and invention.
As an American who was
involved put it,
"What we found here
"was like finding hubcaps
under the ruins
of ancient Rome."
Whatever the final verdict
on the dates
of the Ban Chiang bronze is,
there's already proof
of the existence
of a technically
innovative people who,
by the 4th
or 3rd millennium B.C.,
were capable of using
the local deposits
of copper and tin
for their first steps
into the Bronze Age.
There's already
a massive body of evidence
for an independent discovery
of bronze in the East.
It's to be found
in the vast land
to the north of Thailand.
Underneath these fields
at Anyang
in China's Honan Province,
an ancient city lies buried.
1400 years B.C.,
an emperor of
the Shang people, Pa'anken,
moved his capital
to this cultivated land,
and here the Shang
Dynasty flourished
on this uniquely formed
and fertile land
made up of vast drifts,
sometimes
several hundred feet deep,
of yellow wind-blown dust,
dust called the loess.
The people of Anyang
in those times
lived an existence
like this.
Specialists among them
created the most technically
accomplished works of art
in metal ever known.
The things they made
were buried as ritual gifts.
As the graves
were discovered and looted,
these objects found their way
into museums and collections.
The Shang bronzes
took their place
among the great artistic
triumphs of early civilization.
In 1956,
the archaeologists
resurrected the ancient city.
A systematic, scientific
excavation brought to light
more exquisite examples
of ancient art,
which had been looted
down the years,
and which made
the Shang Dynasty famous.
After they dug it out,
the archaeologists reburied
the old city in the loess.
And returned the land
to cultivation.
The result is that China's
own museums
are beginning
to augment the record
of an unrivaled flowering
of creative expression.
The most immediate
characteristic
of shang bronze work
is its skill in casting.
Chinese craftsmen made
little use of Western techniques
of shaping by hammering.
They were masters
of molten metal.
Their aim was to cast each piece
complete in every detail.
The Shang bronze tradition
would seem to have grown
from the art
of the potter,
particularly his skill
in preparing molds
and his advanced
kiln designs
with their
higher temperatures.
The continuity and tradition
from pottery to bronze
is clearly apparent
in the remarkable
similarity of forms.
Pottery vessels beginning
around 5000 B.C.
are followed by their Shang
bronze derivatives
3,000 years later.
This evidence is held
to support the case
for an independent,
local development
of metallurgy in China,
an achievement that would have
been within the reach
of a people close
to inventing gunpowder,
paper, printing, clockwork,
and the compass.
What's beyond dispute is that
by the 2nd millennium B.C.,
Shang craftsmen
were using molten metal
with an artistic
technical assurance
that was rarely approached
elsewhere in the ancient world.
The most powerful statement
of that skill
is in the vaults
of the Museum in Peking.
This huge bronze cauldron
was an accidental discovery.
It was found by peasants
digging in those fields
at Anyang in 1939.
It was used by them
as a store for pig food.
Something like this
is in a different category
of bronze.
Exquisite is plainly
too perfumed a description
for something as muscular,
stolid, and ponderous as this.
In technical terms alone,
it represents an
extraordinary accomplishment.
The massive body
of this vessel
was cast
in a single piece.
It remains the largest
single casting in metal
which can be dated
with positive assurance
to the 2nd millennium B.C.
It's 1 1/3 meters high,
just over 4 feet,
and it rests
those inches weightily.
It's 875 kilograms,
about 2,000 pounds,
and it weighs, therefore,
just under a ton.
And so this confronts us
with its presence.
Modern metallurgists
have wondered
how it could have been possible
4,000 years ago
for the Chinese to have poured
a ton of molten metal
to make this.
The crucibles were found,
which could have supported
the heat and weight.
It argues that 4,000 years
ago in China,
there was a metal technology
which was no mere aggregate
of village smithy fires,
but which approached
the scale of an industry.
This was the Bronze Age
at its lofty zenith.
But man's preoccupation
with bronze
was about to be
violently interrupted.
In consequence,
he would knock at another,
more formidable door
and enter the age of iron.
I'm Robert Raymond,
and I'm the producer
of this series.
One of the major
unanswered questions
in the history
of man's use of metals
concerns the source
of the tin
which made
the bronze age possible.
Bronze consists of copper
with about 10% tin.
There's no known source
of tin in the ancient world
which could have explained
the objects seen here--
artifacts made
in Cyprus, Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and Assyria
in the 3rd millennium B.C.
The problem
continues to puzzle
archaeologists
and metallurgists,
including the man
who's investigated this mystery
more than anyone else,
James Muhly,
Professor of Ancient History
at the University
of Pennsylvania.
We have been looking
for possible sources
of this tin throughout
the entire area.
Whereabouts
have you looked?
We've looked
everywhere.
From Greece
through Iran
and Afghanistan.
In looking for possible
sources of tin,
one thing we can say
is tin almost always
appears in a host
granite rock.
The tin is to be
found as inclusions
in quartz veins
that run through
the granite rock.
I have some examples
here with me.
These are some
pieces we collected
in the eastern
desert of Egypt
back in 1976.
This is the way
the inclusion
of an oxide of tin
called cassiterite
appears in nature.
It's washed out
of the quartz
eventually
by the action
of the water
and collects
small nuggets
of cassiterite
in the bed
of the stream.
So this is what you
are looking for
as a possible source
of bronze-age tin.
Nobody has been able
to find any real
geological evidence
for tin in the area.
We've never
been able to collect
any actual pebbles
of cassiterite.
What's your thinking
about the whole problem?
Our best geological
evidence at the present
is for the presence
of tin in Afghanistan.
In the 1970s, a group
of Soviet geologists
working on behalf
of Unesco
found a number
of deposits of tin
in Afghanistan,
sizable deposits
that really could represent
an ancient source
of alluvial tin
or cassiterite.
This makes
very good sense
from an archaeological
and historical point
of view, as well.
We know that
the ancient Sumerians
used a great deal
of lapis lazuli,
a semiprecious
blue stone
that is found
only in mines here
in northeastern
Afghanistan.
Afghanistan would
fit the picture?
Afghanistan would
fit everything
we know
about
the archaeology,
about the geology,
and about
the general
historical situation
in the 3rd
millennium B.C.
Now, obviously,
if you have,
geologically,
a tested source
of tin,
then the thing to do
is to go to those
sources
to see if you can
find evidence
for ancient working.
Can we show
that these deposits
were really being
exploited in the 3rd
millennium B.C.?
Unfortunately,
right at the time
when this geological
information became
available,
the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan
closed down
the country
to any further
archaeological
investigation.
So we are left
at present
with a possible
source of tin
that makes
very good sense in
all archaeological
and historical and
geological terms,
but no way of really
investigating this
source
to see
if can we prove
that it was
being exploited
in ancient times.
The discovery in the 1960s
of a Bronze-Age culture
at Ban Chiang in Thailand--
here's some of the pottery
from the excavation--
has challenged many
established theories
of cultural diffusion.
Support for the idea
of an independent
metalworking tradition
in Southeast Asia
comes from
an important new discovery
by Dr. Vincent Pigott.
What we were able
to discover in
the time on survey,
thanks to the work
of a Thai geologist,
was a prehistoric
copper mining site
located on the banks
of the Mekong river
on the Thai-Laotian
border,
where, sometime in
the mid-1st millennium B.C.,
Thai peoples
were extracting
copper-based minerals
from a surface deposit,
primarily malachite
and native copper.
We have some indication
of metal processing,
including
pieces of molds.
Here you have half of
a bivalve sandstone mold
for the making
of a socketed copper ax,
and from one of
the excavation locales,
a socketed ax
of as yet undetermined
composition.
But in Thailand,
most prehistoric
copper-base
artifacts are made
from copper and tin--
that is, bronze.
This leads us into
the whole question
of how metallurgy
was evolving
in Southeast Asia,
which brings on
the larger question
of the idea of cultural
diffusion of technology,
as opposed to
localized, indigenous,
independent invention.
I think at the moment,
the evidence does not
come down in favor
of either argument
very strongly.
In Thailand, all of
the basic necessities
for the origin
and development
of metallurgy
were in place by the
late 3rd millennium B.C.
It's quite true
that metallurgy
had evolved
significantly
earlier elsewhere
in the Old World,
particularly
in the Middle East,
than it had
in Southeast Asia.
What's important
about the research
in Southeast Asia
today is,
we're looking
at these problems
for the first time
in the field
via the techniques
of archaeology
and scientific analysis.
We stand a good chance
of bringing to light
an answer
to this question as
the research proceeds.
Out Of The Fiery Furnace
is brought to you
by a company
that makes aluminum
for transportation,
construction,
and manufacturers
of consumer products
all around your house.
Captioning made possible by
Commonwealth Aluminum
Captioning performed by
the National Captioning
Institute, Inc.
Captions copyright 1986
Opus Films
Public performance of captions
prohibited without permission of
National Captioning Institute
The companion book
Out Of The Fiery Furnace
by Robert Raymond
is published by
the Penn State Press
and is available at bookstores
throughout the country.
