Ancient Peruvian Iron Mine
Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:13 am
Okay experts, what do you make of this?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080129125405.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080129125405.htm
“One intriguing finding is that, contrary to the direction of human occupation of the Americas, knowledge of gold working spread from south to north. The earliest use of beaten gold has been dated to about 2000 BC, in southern Peru. After that, for perhaps two thousand years, there were purely local developments in Peru, involving other metals, including silver, copper and platinum. Then, around the time of Christ, advanced gold technology, including lost wax casting, appeared in Colombia, on the northern coast of South America. Gold working reached Panama in the fifth century AD, and by about the eighth century it was flourishing in Mexico.
In Peru, before the Spanish conquest, copper was possibly the most common metal in use, but the next most abundant was gold, followed by silver. Meteoric iron was rare, and iron smelting was unknown. Nearly all the gold was alluvial, recovered from placer deposits in rivers. Before the grains of gold could be used they had to be melted together in clay crucibles. The Peruvians had no bellows, but used blow pipes to raise their furnace temperatures. The most widely used technique of gold working was the beating of gold and gold alloys into sheets, which were cut and shaped to make the desired objects. Casting was little used.
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com/metallurgy.htm
I'm not sure why this particular find got press because I haven't studied Peru enough to know why it was considered unique or a breakthrough. But in regards to evidence for the Book of Mormon, it's not, unless they shift the setting to Peru, which will cause more problems then it will solve (due to social complexity issues).