Prior to the Bronze Age, the natural world was likely much more beautiful (even ignoring the extra trees), thanks to surface deposits of blue and green copper, and other gems and minerals considered rare now. They were picked up and used by early humans, just like all of the good shells at a beach.
Comments
[deleted]
/u/carboncord has flaired this post as a speculation.
Speculations should prompt people to consider interesting premises that cannot be reliably verified or falsified.
If this post is poorly written, unoriginal, or rule-breaking, please report it.
Otherwise, please add your comment to the discussion!
^^This ^^is ^^an ^^automated ^^system.
^^If ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^questions, ^^please ^^use ^^this ^^link ^^to ^^message ^^the ^^moderators.
Maybe in a few places with lots of copper. I don’t know if it was just lying around everywhere in the forest, so it wouldn’t make a differnce to most places.
You’re partially correct.
Commonly held theory is that metallurgy(in the old world) had its origins in pottery. During the heating of wet clay pots, metal beads would accumulate which gave early humans the idea of their existence. This implies even in those early days metals were found usually in form of ores.
But in rare places, like the Great Lakes region, there were massive blocks of copper just lying around sticking out of the ground. So native Americans of those areas just broke those pieces of using stone tools for their use. Since they got copper in its pure form they never developed techniques like smelting like the old world.
This also means Native Americans reached Copper age a few thousand years before the old world.
Sometimes I think about the fossils they must have found back then before recorded history. They likely had access to some pretty amazing stuff that we’re still unaware of
And this is why I feel theories about ancient advanced civilizations are bunk. If they existed they’d have exhausted all those resources before our ancestors could have found them.
You can get glimpses of this in some places. Hills in Armenia sparkle with obsidian chunks.
Tf you mean “even ignoring the extra trees”, what is it you think makes the natural world look natural?
Reminds me of how all the easy fossil fuel deposits have been exhausted and now we use advanced technology to recover the less accessible deposits. If something happened to our civilization like a meteor strike or a virus that couldn’t be stopped, there would be no way for any future industrial civilization to form for millions of years (how long it takes for fossil fuel deposits to develop). We were only able to industrialize because there was an ease of access to coal and oil right below the surface. Developing fracking and offshore oil technology requires first having attained the energy surplus from the easy stuff.
Same as the Earth during the ages of oceanic iron hundreds of millions to billions of years before we evolved.
The seas were once full of dissolved Iron, and Cyanobacteria that filled the sea produced oxygen, creating iron oxide which would have turned the seas red for eons and eons. This can still be seen today as the Banded Iron Formation, layers of rust deposited over immense swarths of time as it precipitaed out of the ocean. This happened on and off until roughly 500 million years ago, when the last of the iron was used up and the Banded Iron Formations ended, the seas now becoming the blue colour it is today.
A fun thing about this is, the Banded Iron Formations are where the vast majority of Iron Ore we mine originated. Meaning, whilst seeming to be a totally inorganic thing, all the iron we have was directly the result of life on earth.
If only we could time travel back to see early humans rocking their natural bling. They had it all beautiful landscapes and shiny treasures no wonder they were so happy before the Bronze Age.
Ehh… Most of those compounds don’t survive well when exposed to air, sun, and rain. They still had to dig at least a bit for them
another thing is light pollution – most of the people in this comment section have never seen the real nigt sky.
as an example, nowhere in the EU is there a place without light pollution at night.
what all humans that existed until ~200 years ago saw every single night, now most of us never experience.
even if you live in a remote area, light pollution still gets you for a very large distance as its the sky thats illuminated
The landscape may also have been decorated. Some huge impressive chalk hill figures in the UK, like the Uffington White Horse, date back to 1000BC but older ones may have been lost. We know from earlier cup and ring marks (carvings into rocks), and monuments like Newgrange and Stonehenge which were probably painted, that there was a tradition of decorating rocks and hillsides, whose evidence has almost entirely disappeared.