The other, safer, route could be via the mighty Mississippi, the largest river system in North America. It is less than a mile from some parts of the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan to rivers that are part of the Mississippi watershed. There are also a number of places in Wisconsin, south Michigan and north Indiana where you could carry boats (in a process known as ‘portage’) from the Lake Michigan watershed to the Mississippi watershed. Looking at the map, I could see that such an approach would take the Minoans south via evocatively named places like Poverty Point and Cahokia.
Would journeying this far south have made sense?
Yet again, Wendy and her colleagues were being wonderful, supplying me with a lot of papers. It looked to me as if, due to geographic change, this route south had been navigable in the Bronze Age in a way it isn’t today. I’ve made a note of which reference sources were the most useful in the search later in this chapter, but I am starting here with Professor James Scherz, the first man to examine Beaver Island’s stone circle. He had also made a special study of ancient trade routes.14
Professor Scherz writes:
Immediately after the glaciers melted, water levels of the Great Lakes were much lower than today with the main outlet through North Bay [i.e. into the St Lawrence]. 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 [at the southern end of Lake Michigan. ‘CSC’].
Another book showed me pictographs of very old sailing ships – beside Lake Superior. Of course. When Lake Superior and Lake Michigan were one, there was no water level difference at Sault Sainte Marie. So there I had my answer: the Minoans would have been able to ship their precious copper out of America by sailing the grandest river of them all. The Mississippi.
I was still unsure. How on earth, I kept thinking, did they get upriver against the current? And then I realised. I’d got it wrong: the bones were all there, but I’d assembled the skeleton wrongly. Of course, they didn’t; they waited for a favourable wind to be able to sail against the current. 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 current on the Mighty Miss can be very strong in high water periods and the speeds range from 1 to almost 6 knots. If they caught the tide right, travel was dead easy.
If copper was floated south, then there should be evidence of that downriver: evidence of smelting going on, for instance. Finding that would be my next task. It would have been relatively easy to float the copper south on rafts – as indeed logs, cattle and corn were transported south in the early days of European settlement.
The Mississippi would have connected the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico and thence the Atlantic. The river is a series of wide streams – for the most part a steady, fairly even water flow. Sailing north against this flow is tedious, but it is possible in high summer, when the prevailing wind is from the southwest. Mark Twain describes sailing on the Mississippi against the current and some Spanish explorers also used the river to travel north, as did the French Jesuits. The Minoans also had experience of sailing upstream on the Nile – a river which is just as long as the Mississippi.
A bit of further reading and I had calculated that it would take around eight weeks to get from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, sailing and rowing against the current. Floating south, on the other hand, was simple, using the current as the method of propulsion.
HOW WAS IT DONE?
The mining areas are shown on the map ‘The Great Lakes’ map at the front of this book. Various mines are marked with crosses – please also refer to the diagram showing the Geology of Michigan copper in Chapter 33, and James Scherz’s ‘Ancient Trade Routes’ in America’s Copper Country’ (Ancient American, issue 35). At the time those mines were operated (2400–1200 BC) the ice sheets had retreated, to leave Lake Superior ice-free in summer. Mining would take place during the summer months and the ore was carried by ship or raft across the Great Lakes, which were then distinct, but connected, sheets of water. Come winter it would only be possible to move the copper across the lakes by sledge or raft. Mining would not have been possible, given the severe cold.
TRANSPORTATION – LAKE AND RIVER SYSTEMS
The most northerly river, the Ontonagon, flows north through the copper mines into Lake Superior, while the others – the Wisconsin and Rock Rivers – flow south into the Mississippi. As a consequence copper from all of the principal mines could be shipped downstream to Lake Superior using the Ontonagon River or the rivers on Isle Royale which connect the mining area to Lake Superior. This explains the loading harbours found on the northern part of the Keweenaw Peninsula (Pequaming, Anse and Baraga) and around Lake Superior (Otterhead harbour and on Isle Royale). So using natural resources Minoan miners could collect copper and then ship it to Lake Superior without going against the current or negotiating rapids.
LIVING QUARTERS
Come autumn, Lake Superior, the surrounding rivers and the land would have frozen over. In summer, miners would need living quarters within reach of the mines. The map of the Great Lakes shows the areas in which towns fortified sites have been found.
THE VOYAGE SOUTH
I drew my finger southwards down the map, trying to take in the names of the many places at which the Minoans may have rested. It is a long way to what is now Louisiana: they must have stopped to trade what they could for food, and they may well have stopped to process the copper.
‘Are there any major prehistoric sites you know of that could have acted as a trading centre?’ I asked Wendy, who was fast becoming a near-expert on the Bronze Age.
She knew of several, but the most interesting was a major early native Indian settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi. It was a name I had noticed before on the map: Poverty Point. There had even been claims that in times past this very site was Atlantis: might that be a folk memory of the people who had once come here to trade?
Whether or not it had a link to the real Atlantis, this intriguing ancient site had definitely been a major trading point. It had been built over a long period, between 1650 and 700 BC – eight centuries after the building of the Great Pyramid. The dates worked. So did the fact that huge firing ovens have been found near there – as had copper from the Great Lakes.
FOOD
One would have imagined maize would not have grown this far north in 2000 BC, but surprisingly the crop has been found in human graves at Baraga on Lake Superior. It may have been brought up the Mississippi – as I will describe later. Fish and game would have been abundant. Lack of vitamins would have otherwise been a severe problem in winter as would have been lack of potable water; perhaps deep wells were in use and these were not frozen.
A CAMP TO TRADE NEAR POVERTY POINT
On the Pearl River mouth of the Mississippi, near where it debouches into the Gulf of Mexico, we find one of the most revealing bits of evidence. The Claiborne and Cedarland Rings, very near to the trading centre of Poverty Point – and contemporaneous with it – sat on high ground above the marsh created as the Mississippi debouches into the Gulf of Mexico. Excavated by James Bruseth of Louisiana State University in the 1970s, the sites had unfortunately been quite extensively damaged by relic-seekers.
Bruseth was called in just before the bulldozers arrived: a new harbour facility was being built, which was how the site had been uncovered. Along with large concentrations of charcoal, the archaeologist found ‘an enormous hearth, as long as a football field: 6 foot [1.8 metres] deep and 300 feet [91 metres] long’. The huge 91- metre hearth was on a level with a number of smaller hearths, between 50 and 60 centimetres (20 and 26 inches) wide. He put a radiocarbon date of 1425–1400 BC on his finds. He a
lso found large numbers of clay moulds: presumably the remains of the moulds used to cast the copper into ingots.
In the middens, or rubbish pits, Bruseth found hundreds of bits of broken clay which he thought must have been thrown away because they had been broken during the firing process. The fact that they were broken tells us quite the opposite. These were clay moulds, broken when the Minoans hammered them apart to get at the precious cast metal inside. Ingots of pure copper.
How did the Minoans get to Poverty Point?
CHAPTER 36
INTO THE DEEP UNKNOWN
This is what I think happened. Early Minoan explorers crossed the Atlantic with the Equatorial Current, the ‘free ride’ that would be relatively easy in summer before the hurricane season. They visited Meso-America; the proof that they traded cotton, fruit and vegetables is discussed by Professor Sorenson, who has tracked these exchanges.15
After visiting Yucatán, the current would have carried them north to the Mississippi Delta, where they discovered that today’s ‘land of opportunity’ was even then a land of unimaginable riches. They saw float copper (copper lying loose in the soil) being used by the people of Poverty Point, who were international traders. At Poverty Point they were told of the original source of the copper in the Great Lakes: particularly at Lake Superior. On reaching the Great Lakes they saw huge nuggets of pure copper simply lying on the ground. They built a stone observatory on Beaver Island to fix the latitude and longitude of this incredible treasure and drew up a map. Then they set up an entire system to bring the riches back to Europe – creating protected townships for the miners in summer at Lac Vieux Desert, and winter quarters at Aztalan and perhaps Rock Lake.
Lac Vieux Desert is part of the drainage shore of the Mississippi today. Sometime between 1300 and 1200 BC the Aztalan settlement was abandoned, for reasons that remain unknown to this day. During the Bronze Age both the Lac Vieux Desert site and Aztalan were fortified, as well as being protected by water – in the middle of a lake (Vieux Desert) or by the Rock River (Aztalan). Recently, walls and substantial pyramid structures have been found submerged in Rock Lake. Both sites are protected by double embankments. The miners clearly feared attacks – by humans or bears.
I assume Lac Vieux Desert was the summer camp, from which mines could be reached downstream via the Ontonagon River. Aztalan, further south and therefore warmer, was the winter quarters, reached via the Rock River from Lake Michigan.
They built shipyards on Isle Royale, at Otterhead Island and at the northern end of the Keweenaw Peninsula at Pequaming, Baraga and L’Anse. Later they had the sad duty of constructing burial mounds for those workers who died at Aztalan, Rock Lake and Green Bay.
The copper was loaded on to pallets, which were extended to form rafts. These rafts were floated down the Mississippi via Lake Michigan to Poverty Point in the south. Here the vast kilns awaited them. The rafts were broken up to be used for charcoal: the copper was turned into ingots before they’d even left, and stored to await collection by Minoan ships which crossed the Atlantic.
On the return leg, the ancient traders pitched up just north of the Mississippi Delta – and waited for Nature’s largesse. Who knows? Perhaps it was Nature herself who taught them how to get home. We know that 19th-century whalers understood about the currents, because we have records of them watching the great humpback whales hitch a free ride north, and then following them. Our intrepid Minoans may well have followed the loggerhead turtles, fabulous creatures born under a million stars on the beaches in Crete, as they began their epic journey home to breed.
On the return journey they again found a free ride on the Gulf Stream. Warmed by the sun in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, water rushes east through its only point of escape, the narrow Straits of Florida. Thirty million cubic metres (39 million cubic yards) per second of water drain out of the Florida Straits, pumping our Minoan ships north.
It’s difficult fully to grasp the immensity of this great ocean river. To carry just the sea salt that flies through the Straits every hour would take more ships than exist in the entire world today. A billion cubic feet of water streams past Miami every second of the day.
The push through the straits, only 50 miles (80 kilometres) wide and 2,500 feet (760 metres) deep in places, increases the speed and force of the Florida current. Deflected to the north by the Bahamas, the Florida Current then joins with the Antilles Current. The Gulf Stream System, as it has just become, then triples in volume and pushes north.
The Minoans may have whiled the hours away watching the whales, as the huge mammals fed off the plankton-rich waters along the current’s edge. Or they could have seen the blue sharks that use the current to reach their pupping grounds off southern Ireland, west Wales, Spain and Portugal. The total round trip made by these amazing predators is 9,500 miles (15,300 kilometres).
The current flows north along the southeastern United States, slowing as it runs toward Cape Hatteras, and then turns towards the east. Off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the Gulf Stream and the Labrador currents collide, creating fogs and storms famous for their treacherous nature. The ocean water temperature changes are often dramatic: as much as 20 degrees of change as you cross from one current to the other.
The huge wheel of the North Atlantic continues to turn. As they pass Nova Scotia the water flow increases to 150 million cubic metres (195 million cubic yards) per second, pushing them on to the Outer Hebrides (Lewis) and the Orkney Islands. Here at their bases their compatriots have erected ‘observatories’ – stone circles as at Stonehenge – where they can compare and update their star charts. They then follow what would later become the English, French and Spanish coasts as they set out for home.
Now the pole star is sinking lower in the heavens. When it reaches the latitude of the Pillars of Hercules, they know they must head due east – and prepare for a joyous return to Crete.
I could rest now, happy that I had solved my conundrum. The solution to the mystery of the missing copper, I now realised, had been staring me in the face at the beautiful, autumnal Lake Superior: in the form of Mother Nature.
Nature provided everything – from the copper sitting right on the surface, ready to be collected, to the wood for the rafts and the water to carry them. Mother Nature was behind the significant change in water levels over three millennia. And in riding the Gulf Stream back to Britain, the Minoans used what came perfectly naturally to them – the power of the seas.
CHAPTER 37
SO: THE PROOF
I decided to look in detail at the prehistoric mining tools and copper implements found on the Keweenaw Peninsula and on Isle Royale, starting with the stone hammers.
The fact that Great Orme and Isle Royale copper miners used identical mining tools could, of course, be a coincidence. It could simply be put down to the designer’s favourite adage: form follows function.
What about the other copper implements left by the miners for other purposes? To ascertain the full extent of the similarities we built up a file of prehistoric Lake Superior copper implements.
We also took photographs at a number of American museums and obtained others from an excellent website called The Great Lakes Copper Culture. Thousands of different copper and bronze tools have been found around Lake Superior: projectiles with flat, conical and rat-tail points and square and ornate sockets; harpoons with flat and round tangs; knives of every shape and function – with crescent-shaped, straight and curved blades; all manner of fish hooks; scrapers and spatulas; axes, adzes, palstaves; punching instruments in the form of awls, needles, gorges, mandrils, finger drills; fasteners in the shape of staples, clasps and rivets; personal adornments – bracelets, rings, beads, gorgets, tinkling earrings. There were literally hundreds of varieties of copper and bronze implements, running into thousands of individual items.
Then it struck me. If, as I had been contending, it was the Minoans who had mined the copper of the Great Lakes, then we should compare artefacts like for like wi
th artefacts found in Crete, on Thera and in the Uluburun wreck. So I re-examined the museum catalogues. These, time and again, showed photographs of bronze utensils identical to their Lake Superior counterparts of the same age. You can view a selection of compansons in the colour plate section and on our website.
DETERMINING THE SOURCE OF COPPER ARTEFACTS THROUGH TRACE ELEMENT PATTERNS AND X-RAY SPECTROMETRY
A number of American geologists agree that Great Lakes copper was of extraordinary purity. Professor James B. Griffin of the University of Michigan puts the total trace elements in the material at 0.1 per cent or less: i.e. the copper is of 99 per cent purity or more.
It should be possible to use non-invasive X-ray spectrometry to measure the trace elements in copper artefacts from Lake Superior and the Uluburun wreck and then use the results to discover if the Great Lakes were the original source of the copper.
As far as I know, two attempts to use this method have been made, in studies thirty years apart. The first one was made by Edward J. Olsen16 and the second by Georg (Rip) Rapp, James Allert, Vanda Vitali, Zhichun Jing and Eiler Henrickson.17
I found both easy to read. Essentially they both reached the same conclusions. There are so many variables that any conclusion reached has to be on a ‘balance of possibility’ basis (my wording) and treated with great caution. It may one day be possible to be certain, but much more work is required. George Rapp and colleagues state that their purpose was to (1) indicate the extent to which sources of natural copper can be chemically distinguished; (2) present a methodology for trace-element sourcing; (3) publish a small database; (4) provide another means by which archaeologists can approach complexities in trade and exchange networks. There is a final caution concerning finding a ‘reasonable’ geographic source area. (As soon as the word ‘reasonable’ appears, it seems to me that the possible area of the source becomes too wide to draw definite conclusions.)
The Lost Empire of Atlantis Page 28