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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.
www.timesofisrael.com
This is pretty cool.
“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.
6,500-year-old metalworkers: Humanity’s 1st smelting furnaces found in Israel?
Scientific study of traces of copper furnaces near Beersheba shows necessity was not the mother of invention, but rather human intellectual curiosity -- and the desire to show off
www.timesofisrael.com
This is pretty cool.
