This chapter explores the one problem that remained to be resolved. How would the Minoans have transported the copper? There are only two possible routes: the first is east, through the Great Lakes to the St Lawrence and then head for Newfoundland. The other, safer, route could be via the mighty Mississippi, the largest river system in North America.
According to the research of Professor James Scherz, immediately after the glaciers melted, water levels of the Great Lakes were much lower than today, with the main outlet through North Bay. But as the land rose under the melted glacier, the river at North Bay also rose. So did lake levels behind it, until the waters of Lakes Huron, Michigan and Superior combined into a giant body of water called ‘Lake Nipissing’, but the water could continue rising only so long, and finally a southern outlet opened into the Illinois River over the present Chicago Ship Canal. They would have waited for a favourable tide to be able to sail against the current of the mighty mississippi. Large vessels from the Mississippi could then have sailed directly into Lake Nipissing, and then on to Keweenaw and Isle Royale. And coming back, they would have used the current. The Mississippi would have connected the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico and thence the Atlantic.
Further reading:
Coming for Copper: http://aaapf.org/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=49
Homer, The Odyssey: http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html
N.H. Winchell, ‘Ancient Copper Mines of Isle Royale’, Popular Science Monthly, vol. 19, 1881 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_19/September_1881/Ancient_Copper-Mines_of_Isle_Royale
Old water levels and waterways during the Ancient Copper Mining Era (about 3000 BC to 1000 BC)by James P. Scherz, Prof. Emeritus, Dept. Of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Surveying and Mapping Section), University of Wisconsin, July, 1999
