Somewhere around 5,000 years ago, men living in what is now Turkey learned to combine copper and tin to create bronze. But the source of the tin had long remained a mystery. Some thought it came from Cornwall in England, others believed it might have been brought in from what is now Afghanistan. But in 1994, a team led by Dr. Aslihan Yener of the University of Chicago announced the discovery what has proven to be the oldest known tin mine in the Taurus Mountains of Turkey.
The mine consists of a network of narrow tunnels and shafts. Analysis of artifacts, including skeletons of what are believed to be miners, shows that the mine was most active for about a thousand years beginning in approximately 2870 B.C. The Bronze Age is thought to have begun around 5,000 years ago, so this mine dates from the beginning of the revolutionary technology, which eventually replaced the use of stone for weapons and tools.
The ancient mine is located in rural Kestel in the Central Taurus Mountains. It had actually been discovered several years before Dr. Yener’s team published its findings, but the team waited several years while they recovered and analyzed evidence discovered at the mine itself and other material found in the surrounding area.
Bronze remained one of the most important metals for nearly 3,000 years. Eventually, however around 1100 B.C, ancient metallurgists learned to work iron, which was much stronger than bronze. Bronze remained important in the arts. Bronze statues are still being created today.
Was bronze discovered accidentally by a metalworker who was using contaminated copper, or was it created as the result of experimentation? We will probably never know the answer to that question.
There’s more information on the Kestrel tin mine here
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