Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1893 — An Age of Copper. [ARTICLE]

An Age of Copper.

L n lon Iron. M. Berthelot, the French technist, in a recent communication to the Academic des Sciences, states his belief in the some time existence of an age of copper in addition to the three recognized archaeological eons of stone, bronze (copper and tin) and iron. He bases his opinion chiefly upon an analysis of a piece of copper which had been found by M. de Sarzec in the court of antiquarian investigation in Mesopotamia or Al Jezira. as the Arabs designate the famous stretch of country between the Euphrates and the Tigris. The fragment thus chemically determined proves to have neither tin nor zinc entering into its composition, there being simply traces of lead and arsenic. water and the atmosphere hacTmade ravages into the specimen, which was practically a sub-oxide or a compound of protoxide and metallic copper. As the ruins from which the piece of metal was taken are authoritatively considered to be more ancient .than qven those of Babylon, M. Berthelot does not hesitate to promulgate the theory that an age of copper preceded the bronze and iron periods, especially as the examination of the component parts of a portion of a metallic scepter which, it is alleged, belonged to a Pharaoh who reigned in Egypt some 3,500 years before Christ, showed no sign of the presence of tin.