Our quest moves to the Great Orme Copper mines in Northwest Wales. Mining engineers have calculated that 1,700 tonnes of copper must have been extracted from these ancient mines. That is enough to make more than ten million axes – three for each man, woman and child who then lived in Great Britain. The copper could have supplied enough bronze for three million saws – enough for the pyramid builders, 2,000 miles away in Saqqara, ancient Egypt.
The abundant mining activity here at Great Orme was to result in perhaps the first industrial process in Britain, started some 4,500 years ago.
Further reading:
Great Orme Ancient Mines: http://www.greatormemines.info
Cyrus Gordon, Before Columbus; Links Between the Old World and Ancient America, New York: Crown Publishers, 1971, p. 81 :
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,844460,00.html
http://mailstar.net/before-columbus.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_H._Gordon
R.F. Tylecote, The Prehistory of Metallurgy in the British Isles:
http://books.google.com/books/abou/The_prehistory_of_metallurgy_in_the_Brit.html?id=HphTAAAAMAAJ
Man’s First Encounters With Metallurgy Theodore A. Wertime. Science 25 December 1964: Vol. 146 no. 3652 p. 1664
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/146/3649/1257.extract
