6,500-year-old metalworkers: Humanity’s 1st smelting furnaces found in Israel?

Almost Heaven

Well-Known Member
A new archaeological study shows that even some 6,500 years ago, Israel was already a start-up nation — complete with a metallurgy R&D hub in Beersheba. Salvage excavations in the Negev Desert capital in 2017 revealed 6,500-year-old copper smelting workshops using the earliest-known evidence of furnaces instead of small portable crucibles for metallurgy.

“This is the high tech of the period, there was no more sophisticated technology,” said Tel Aviv University Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef. The movement from crucible to furnace represents cutting-edge technology, said Ben-Yosef.
Metallurgy emerged in the Southern Levant during the second half of the 5th millennium BCE. According to Ben-Yosef, the Beersheba discovery indicates a technological evolution from an earlier method of smelting ore, which used small pottery crucibles, to these newly uncovered, larger in-ground furnaces.

The innovation allowed for a two-step smelting process in industrialized workshops uncovered in several Beersheba-area settlements. These workshops, he said, were manned by highly specialized craftsmen that produced pure copper ingots and some ceremonial objects.

“There is no doubt that ancient Beersheba played an important role in advancing the global metal revolution and that in the fifth millennium BCE the city was a technological powerhouse for this whole region,” he said in a Tel Aviv University press release.

The findings were published in the study “Firing up the furnace: New insights on metallurgical practices in the Chalcolithic Southern Levant from a recently discovered copper-smelting workshop at Horvat Beter (Israel),” which appeared in the scientific Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The Horvat Beter site was excavated ahead of a neighborhood expansion in Beersheba. “The surprising finds include a small workshop for smelting copper with shards of a furnace – a small installation made of tin in which copper ore was smelted — as well as a lot of copper slag,” said Talia Abulafia, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The Horvat Beter settlement is identified with the Chalcolithic period’s Ghassulian culture, which is known for its fine craftsmanship. There, raw copper ore, mined 100 kilometers away in Jordan’s mineral-rich Wadi Faynan, was refined in what Ben-Yosef calls a “magical” process.

“It was not that they threw this green mineral into the fire and woke up and got copper,” Ben-Yosef told The Times of Israel. Production required sophisticated knowledge of temperature control, mineral mixture and many other parameters. “The end result was like magic — you take a rock and turn it into this shiny wonderful material,” he said.

The study included elemental analysis of ceramics and slag which was primarily conducted by a portable X-ray fluorescence instrument, according to the article. The team analyzed 14 crucible fragments, 18 presumed-furnace fragments and 26 pieces of slag.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/evide...naces-from-6500-years-ago-found-in-beersheba/
 

Kaatje

My soul waits for the Lord, and in His Word I hope
Very interesting!

6500 years ago that is about the times short after Eden.

Genesis 4:
19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah,
and the name of the other Zillah. 22 And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain,
an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron:
 

railfan727

Active Member
A new archaeological study shows that even some 6,500 years ago, Israel was already a start-up nation — complete with a metallurgy R&D hub in Beersheba. Salvage excavations in the Negev Desert capital in 2017 revealed 6,500-year-old copper smelting workshops using the earliest-known evidence of furnaces instead of small portable crucibles for metallurgy.

“This is the high tech of the period, there was no more sophisticated technology,” said Tel Aviv University Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef. The movement from crucible to furnace represents cutting-edge technology, said Ben-Yosef.
Metallurgy emerged in the Southern Levant during the second half of the 5th millennium BCE. According to Ben-Yosef, the Beersheba discovery indicates a technological evolution from an earlier method of smelting ore, which used small pottery crucibles, to these newly uncovered, larger in-ground furnaces.

The innovation allowed for a two-step smelting process in industrialized workshops uncovered in several Beersheba-area settlements. These workshops, he said, were manned by highly specialized craftsmen that produced pure copper ingots and some ceremonial objects.

“There is no doubt that ancient Beersheba played an important role in advancing the global metal revolution and that in the fifth millennium BCE the city was a technological powerhouse for this whole region,” he said in a Tel Aviv University press release.

The findings were published in the study “Firing up the furnace: New insights on metallurgical practices in the Chalcolithic Southern Levant from a recently discovered copper-smelting workshop at Horvat Beter (Israel),” which appeared in the scientific Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The Horvat Beter site was excavated ahead of a neighborhood expansion in Beersheba. “The surprising finds include a small workshop for smelting copper with shards of a furnace – a small installation made of tin in which copper ore was smelted — as well as a lot of copper slag,” said Talia Abulafia, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The Horvat Beter settlement is identified with the Chalcolithic period’s Ghassulian culture, which is known for its fine craftsmanship. There, raw copper ore, mined 100 kilometers away in Jordan’s mineral-rich Wadi Faynan, was refined in what Ben-Yosef calls a “magical” process.

“It was not that they threw this green mineral into the fire and woke up and got copper,” Ben-Yosef told The Times of Israel. Production required sophisticated knowledge of temperature control, mineral mixture and many other parameters. “The end result was like magic — you take a rock and turn it into this shiny wonderful material,” he said.

The study included elemental analysis of ceramics and slag which was primarily conducted by a portable X-ray fluorescence instrument, according to the article. The team analyzed 14 crucible fragments, 18 presumed-furnace fragments and 26 pieces of slag.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/evide...naces-from-6500-years-ago-found-in-beersheba/
That is exactly where and when we'd expect to see it, according to the biblical timeline!
 

castcrowns

Well-Known Member
Very interesting!

6500 years ago that is about the times short after Eden.

Genesis 4:
19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah,
and the name of the other Zillah. 22 And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain,
an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron:
I used to struggle with this concept about iron working before the Flood.

But then it occured to me that the two thousand years post Flood was a type of renassaunce period for mankind. That's why the Iron Age appeared much later post Flood.
 
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