In America, from Bolivia to Lake Superior, we find
everywhere the traces of a long-enduring Copper Age; bronze existed, it
is true, in Mexico, but it held the same relation to the copper as the
copper held to the bronze in Europe--it was the exception as against the
rule. And among the Chippeways of the shores of Lake Superior, and among
them alone, we find any traditions of the origin of the manufacture of
copper implements; and on the shores of that lake we find pure copper,
out of which the first metal tools were probably hammered before man had
learned to reduce the ore or run the metal into moulds. And on the
shores of this same American lake we find the ancient mines from which
some people, thousands of years ago, derived their supplies of copper.
IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS OF THE BRONZE AGE
Sir W. R. Wilde says, "It is remarkable that so few antique copper
implements have been found (in Europe), although a knowledge of that
metal must have been the preliminary stage in the manufacture of
bronze." He thinks that this may be accounted for by supposing that "but
a short time elapsed between the knowledge of smelting and casting
copper ore and the introduction of tin, and the subsequent manufacture
and use of bronze.
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