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The "Oxhide Ingot" from Lake Gogebic, Michigan

4/10/2015

39 Comments

 
Clear your schedule for the next five minutes, because you’re not going to want to stop reading this blog post.  My quest to understand the story of the alleged “oxhide ingot” from Lake Gogebic, Michigan,"heralds the arrival of a new breed of lightning-paced, intelligent thriller…surprising at every twist, absorbing at every turn, and in the end, utterly unpredictable…right up to its astonishing conclusion" where I remain frustratingly unable to track the claim back to its source. I'm guessing it's pretty much like The Da Vinci Code, to which the above quote refers.  I haven't actually read The Da Vinci Code, but, as I'm learning, becoming familiar with primary sources is not a requirement when doing "research" about things like the presence of Old World copper miners in eastern North America.
PictureCopper oxhide ingot from the Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck found off the coast of Turkey (source in text).
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, an oxhide ingot is an ingot of copper cast into a quadrilateral shape with concave sides and four "handles" (apparently its called an “oxhide” because it resembles a stretched animal hide in shape).  During the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean (ca. 3200-1000 BC), copper was smelted and cast into ingots of this shape weighing about 60-70 pounds (~30 kg) for transport.  We know something about oxhide ingots because they’ve been found on shipwrecks, were depicted in art across the region, and have been analyzed to try to understand their role in Bronze Age production and exchange networks.  The photo to the right (from this site) shows two people holding one of the ingots from the Uluburun shipwreck so you can get an idea of the size of these things.  If you skim through the pictures available online, you'll notice quite a bit of variability in shape. If you want to get further into the nitty gritty of the Bronze Age copper trade, a recent (2007) thesis by Michael Rice Jones titled Oxhide Ingots, Copper Production, and the Mediterranean Trade in Copper and Other Metals in the Bronze Age is available here.

What does this have to do with Lake Gogebic? Proponents of the idea that the ancient copper mines of Michigan were actually worked by miners from the Old World (rather than Native Americans) have latched on to various "artifacts" over the years as proof of trans-oceanic contact.  I'm not even going to attempt to get into all that - none of the various inscribed tablets, petroglyphs, etc., has held up to scrutiny. What caught my attention this week was a claim that an actual oxhide ingot had been found in the New World.  I became aware of this claim when I saw a post in a Facebook group by David Towle, one of the guests on this interview.  Towle stated that multiple full-size (i.e., 60-70 pound) oxhide ingots had been found near Lake Gogebic, in the western Upper Peninsula.


Picture
Towle's statement got my attention: finding an actual oxhide ingot in good archaeological context would be a game changer for proponents of a Bronze Age connection with the New World, and the claim that one actually had been found was news to me.  An actual oxhide ingot that had been created in a mold would provide direct evidence of New World participation in a Bronze Age raw materials economy.  That would be much clearer evidence than any kind of chemical test on Old World bronze artifacts that I can think of, because it would remove ambiguity about the changes introduced into the signature of the copper through refinement and mixture.  Given how important such a find would be, I was surprised when my first attempt at an online search came up empty:  no story, no photos, nothing.  Where could I read about this find from Lake Gogebic? When I asked Towle about it online, I got a response which I would characterize as less than helpful:
Picture
Okay – so no help there.  Towle had pointed me to yet another website that talked about copper mining in the New World but showed images of oxhide ingots from the Old World.  And it looked like the number of Michigan oxhides was growing - now we were at seven.  As you can see from my exchange with Towle, by then I had succeeded in finding a written source that mentioned the alleged oxhide ingot.  Frank Joseph’s (1995:40) book Atlantis in Wisconsin contains the following sentence:

“Closer to the focus of our investigations, a sixty-pound copper ox hide was discovered near Lake Gogebic, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”

So that was something: I had found a written source. There is an endnote attached to the sentence, but, frustratingly, I couldn’t read it because the limited view available in Google Books didn’t allow me to see the last portion of the book. I asked around online and couldn’t find anyone who owned a copy.  So it looked like my search would be on hold until I could get a copy of Joseph's book to read that endnote.

Dammit.

After more searching, however, mostly by just Googling phrases with various combinations of key words related to the ingot and its location, I found some online chatter that had paraphrased part of a (1993) article by Better Sodders that had appeared in Ancient American magazine (Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 28-31).  This seemed promising, as it would take me back two years before Joseph's book and maybe get me to the source of the story or more information.  I dutifully paid my $4.95 for a pdf of the issue so I could read the story (“Who Mined American Copper 5,000 Years Ago?”).  In that article, Sodders writes:

“A wall-painting in the Egyptian Tomb of Rekmira depicts red-skinned men, possibly American Indians, carrying oxhydes on their shoulders to the tax collector.  The copper ingots are exact duplicates of a specimen excavated near Lake Gogebic in Michigan’s Ontonagon County.”


Frustratingly, there was no source given for the story or any other information provided.  So that seemed like another dead end. I found Betty Sodders online, however, and sent her an email asking about the alleged oxhide ingot from Lake Gogebic.  She sent me a very nice reply the next morning and directed me to  her (1991) book Michigan Prehistory Mysteries Two (the second volume of a two-volume set).  She even told me what pages to look on and said that there were . . .  wait for it . . . photos of the oxhide ingot.  Thank you Betty Sodders.

Okay, now I was getting somewhere.  I found Michigan Prehistory Mysteries on Amazon.com, but was disappointed to learn that the second volume, unlike the first, was not available electronically. 

Dammit!

I looked around for other ways to get ahold of the book, but couldn’t find a way to download it anywhere without feeling like I was putting my computer at risk of being infected by something.  Then, in a stroke of genius, I remembered that I actually work at a university that has a real library with real books.  Lo and behold, Grand Valley’s library owns a copy of Michigan Prehistory Mysteries Two.  Even better, it turned it was actually housed in a “library use only” collection less than 200 yards from my office.

So, it was really time to take David Towle's admonition to heart and get out of my La-Z-Boy and go the Seidman House library (disclosure: my desk chair is actually made by Steelcase, as is just about everything at Grand Valley).  I made plans to go and look at the book that afternoon.  Brian Fagan was doing an informal question-answer session with some of our students from 3:00-4:15 that afternoon, so I planned to go to that and then stop by the Seidman House library on the way back to my office. Fagan was great, and I hung around for a few minutes afterward to introduce myself and shake his hand. I got to the Seidman House at 4:28 and the door was locked: the library there closes at 4:30.

Dammit.
PictureMap showing the distance I had to cover to see a picture of the alleged oxhide ingot from Lake Gogebic. It was raining really hard, so I borrowed an umbrella from our Office Coordinator.
So I had to wait until the next morning to finally get a look at the elusive oxhide ingot of Lake Gogebic.  I taught class from 8:30-9:45, then I had office hours from 10:00-12:00 – my students are working on their papers, so I expected I would be busy and I was. By the time noon came around it was raining like a $%*!(&$@ outside.  But I made the journey anyway, because science is important.

I had to fill out a form to see the book, but I did it, because science is important. When I finally got my hands on Michigan Prehistory Mysteries Two, I was not disappointed. I skimmed the chapter that Betty Sodders had pointed me to and photographed all the pages.

And there, as promised, was a picture of the alleged oxhide ingot.
Picture
At first glance it looks “better” than I thought it would. It is about the right size, has four sides, and appears to be tabular.  It is not a great match for any of the Mediterranean oxhide ingots that I've seen pictures of, however: two of the sides are concave, one is convex, and one appears to be roughly straight.  The surface is rough and the edges are rough. And that's about all I can tell from looking at the photo.

It is shown being held by Dr. James Scherz, who is identified as the finder in the caption. Here is what Sodders writes about it:

“This particular oxhyde Scherz is holding was photographed by Warren Dexter at Topaz near Lake Gogebic, east of Bergland and Matchwood in the western confines of the U.P.”

That’s not much more than I already knew, but at least there is another name: James Scherz is going to be the key to wrapping this story up.  So far, I have been unable to identify a publication of his (he has written many having to do with New World-Old World contacts) that tells the story of this artifact. I have also been unable to find a current email address for him so that I can ask him about it directly.  Doing a little bit of searching makes it apparent that he has been involved in Burrows Cave, the story of which is beyond the scope of anything I plan to write about.

So what is the rest of the story behind this artifact? Where did it come from? In what context was it found? Where is it now?  I'm pretty sure James Scherz could answer all of these questions. If anyone knows how he can be reached or can make him aware of this post, I would appreciate it.  Then maybe we'll have a conclusion to the exciting story of the oxhide ingot from Lake Gogebic. 

I emailed
Bruce H. Johanson, President Ontonagon County Historical Society, and he informed me the alleged oxhide ingot is not in their collections.

Now you can go back to whatever else you were doing.

39 Comments
Gary
4/10/2015 02:37:21 am

I think this is him. It shows an email.
http://directory.engr.wisc.edu/cee/faculty/scherz_james

Reply
Andy White
4/10/2015 02:44:25 am

Yeah, I tried that one: it bounced my message back. I have a lead on another email address. I'll keep you posted.

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Patricia
4/10/2015 10:35:08 pm

Finding the search fascinating - and the prose is great.

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Andy White
4/10/2015 10:36:52 pm

A real page turner.

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David Cusack
4/11/2015 12:19:46 am

Not only out of the lazy boy, but through a pounding rainstorm.

If only I knew, we have both volumes here in the Lyons Township Library, I could have saved you the potential for life threatening hypothermia.

Kudos on your intrepid and resolute dedication to Science!

Reply
Andy White
4/11/2015 02:53:04 am

It was touch and go there for a while, but I made it. My socks got a little wet though.

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ted sojka
4/12/2015 06:22:13 am

Jim can be contacted through the Ancient Earth Society
ancientearthworks@gmail.com

This looks like a pounded copper piece of float copper, with no signs of smelting. The U of Minn. made some copper ingots of this type for a project to see what they would look like underwater in a side scan radar image for Jeff Bennett. Wayne Potraz was the professor who made the patterns with his students and did the pour to make a few of the Hydes, The patterns were modeled after the ones in that photo from the Mediterranean Ship find.

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Andy White
4/22/2015 04:58:33 am

Hi Ted,

Thanks for the comment. Do you think the "ingot" in the photo could be one of the ones created as an experiment?

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Kevin Callaghan
12/17/2019 08:08:30 am

Hello Ted

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JM
5/25/2015 12:17:03 pm

Man, that play by play with the map was straight up "Expedition Unknown" style. As I read, I imagined the voice of Josh Gates narrating every step of the way ...still belly laughing anout your intrepid adventure across campus

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S Kalyanaraman link
6/29/2016 07:53:17 pm

Andy,

Here is the comment I posted on Jay's article on the site. I think there is a link between the Mohenjo-daro prism tablet which shows a cargo of oxhide ingots on a boat and 1. Michigan finds; and 2. the oxhide ingots and oxhide ingot mould discovered in Ancient Near East.

Jay, please do post the photos. I am also posting a comment on Andy White's photo at http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/the-oxhide-ingot-from-lake-gogebic-michigan I have indicated oxhide ingots shown on a boat, on an Indus Script Mohenjo-daro prism tablet, discussed in a string of posts See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2016/06/indus-script-on-mohenjo-daro-prism.html

I think we are entering into a fascinating transcontinental archaeometalurgical journey from Hanoi (Vietnam) through Haifa (Israel) to Michigan :)--

Kalyan

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Andy White
6/30/2016 06:39:52 am

Hello,

You have misunderstood and/or misrepresented my position. I do not believe there is any good evidence that anyone other than Native Americans mined copper in the New World.

Also, I did not give you permission to reproduce my entire blog post on your site. You may link to it, of course, and quote it. But you cannot reproduce the whole thing.

Thanks,

Andy

Reply
kalyan97
6/30/2016 07:22:46 am

I apologise for the full post which was done on blog for ready reference. I have amended your references, leaving only URL link to your post
http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/the-oxhide-ingot-from-lake-gogebic-michigan​ Please confirm if the updated post http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2016/06/transcontinental-civilization-journey.html is ok. Again, sorry for any inconvenience caused.​
.

Thanks for your clarification, Andy. I am grateful to you for the insights provided on oxhide ingots in ancient America.

kalyan97
6/30/2016 09:06:38 am

I found this lucid blog of Andy at http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/research-hint-writing-minoan-on-photographs-of-native-american-remains-does-not-actually-prove-they-are-minoan

If the so-called 'mold' was from Tennessee, it certaintly seems to be evidence of oxhide shape which was a brand for a copper trade all over ancient Europe. Where is the 1934 Tennessee excavation report?

Andy White
6/30/2016 09:11:36 am

It's from Tennessee, but how do you know it's a "mold"?

kalyan97
6/30/2016 08:28:50 am

https://historyhereticorg.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/cc32.png The image can be seen at https://historyheretic.org/2015/05/24/minoanoxhideproof/ with the title: Oxhide ingot mold misidentified as fire altar (by Tennessee Valley excavations of 1934. I do not know the source for the photograph. There are other photos too at the site which claims 'Minoans discovered America'.

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Andy White
6/30/2016 09:00:48 am

Yes, Pulitzer asserts that all of those things are somehow connected to Minoan copper mining, but provides no evidence or analysis to back any of that up. There are copper artifacts from the Americas that have the same general shape as oxhide ingots, but they are cold-hammered (not cast) and are not the same size.

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kalyan97
6/30/2016 09:33:30 am

Two known 'molds' are from Ras Ibn Hani, Syria and Timna, Israel. See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2016/06/tracking-dissemination-of-knowledge.html It is possible that the oxhide shape was adopted in Tennessee because the shape was the 'brand' or 'standard' for trade weighing about 60 lbs when cast or forged. We do not have the dates of the Tennessee finds or any excavation reports?.I agree with you, Andy, it is a tall claim to say Minoans came and worked on the site based on mere coincidence of ingot shapes.

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RTM
3/3/2017 10:16:59 pm

Hi Andy. What is the size range of oxhide ingots? I keep finding weights but no measurements. Is there a comprehensive list anywhere that would contain this information?

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Ted
11/27/2017 06:15:56 am

The capacity of the human mind to reject the intrusion of new information is infinite

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Steve B
11/21/2018 11:13:34 am

Yup. Hundreds of years ago these same stubborn minds imprisoned people for thinking the earth was round, or that it wasn't the center of the universe (a universe that was obviously flat too). Today these same simple minds who use an even greater lack of "scientific" evidence to back up their non-progressive, statically skeptical viewpoint and opinions, are the ones who not surprisingly want people to stop thinking altogether and retreat politically and as a society because we (mankind that is) have it all figured out and are the smartest gnats on this pile of rotten fruit. “No way that ever happened…I don’t know why (but give me a second and I’ll come up with something), I just know it’s impossible. Now get off my lawn!”

The same non-proof they don't have of Minoans coming to this continent long before they want to give Europeans (or any culture for that matter) credit for, will also be sued refute the science of metallurgy that says definitively that the 10 tons of copper oxhide ingots recovered from the late Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of Turkey, could be none other than Michigan copper, based on...wait for it…facts and simple logic. But that would mean they actually came on boats and we have proof (no you don’t) that they couldn’t have done that (Sure they could have). But whatever helps them sleep better. Oh, they'll spin and bark anything to refute those findings, and behave like a 5-year old putting their fingers in their ears and humming loudly about the realistic and very plausible concept that they could travel to the North American continent just as easily as the Polynesians traveled to South America thousands of years before even that.

We're talking about the same shallow minds and inherently belligerent Catholic funded bigoted institutions that until just recently were steadfast in their "scientific" beliefs that Columbus was the first white person to step foot in North America, a notion that becomes more comical with every passing day and new discovery that says otherwise. These are the minds that you are arguing with, one’s that will and have refuted both theory and evidence at the cost of - heaven forbid - begin wrong or having their beliefs altered. Can you imagine being married to one of these brick-minded people and having a debate…about anything? Good luck with that. I guess someday they’ll have to jump off a bridge when science has proof the Minoans were here and transported copper. I know…devastating! They weren’t even Catholic! How would they move on? But they needn’t worry, because it wasn’t women…or god forbid black people, right? At least they’ll have that leg to still stand on…for now.

Don’t get me wrong, being skeptical is fine and sometimes a very good trait to have, versus running with the first new idea that comes along just because it’s exciting and different, but there is nothing more disturbing and dangerous to the progression of thought than a closed-minded skeptic who can't be at least open to possibility, especially when there is very real chance of it being valid. But, we’re talking about people who if were somehow confronted with a bigfoot emerging from a round spaceship on their front lawn riding a unicorn and throwing a custard pie in their face, would run back into the house and tell everyone it must have been a weather balloon, or that darn swamp gas again, as they right themselves for a wonderful evening out at a glorious Trump rally. Seriously though; bigfoot on a spaceship and a Unicorn? lol that’s almost as silly as Native Americans ever having a metal/copper based culture that would require them to actually mine copper because the truth is; I can probably find more copper in the plumbing section of my local Home Depot, that all the copper artifacts ever found used for making anything other than jewelry by the native North American peoples. So where did it go? Even if it were only a fraction of the estimated amount, it sure didn’t stay in North America. Who cares though, as long as it didn’t go to Europe, right?

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Andrew LB
7/10/2019 05:59:36 am

That huge rant all so you can make a pathetic attempt at equating Trump supporters to flat earthers and Catholics, which is quite hilarious considering Catholics vote primarily Democrat. And last I checked, it's not Trump supporters who believe in more than two genders and that anyone with a viewpoint that isn't in line with far left progressives should be considered hate speech and silenced, even using violence to shut down opposing views (Antifa).

And what the hell do black people have to do with this? Or were you just projecting your own racism onto others, as is common among those on the left. You can't sit there and point and call people racists when your party is the party of segregation, jim crow, the KKK, and Slavery. The only difference with todays democrats is they've changed tactics. They can no longer directly oppress blacks, so they keep them in horrible failing schools and dependent on government, all to keep them on the government plantation and voting democrat. Identity politics is nothing but racist politics. and the democrats

Richard de Grasse, Capt. USCG retired
10/28/2018 10:03:28 am

Can't we accept the materials analysis of the copper from the Uluburun wreck? What I've read Michigan copper is 99.9% pure and it matches the copper from the Uluburun wreck.

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Marc Majus
2/24/2019 01:42:48 pm

USCG protects underwater historical items
One of the protected locations is Lake Michigan off the East side of Door Peninsula. Proposed area is under consideration to be National Park, currently Newport State Park. This is LAST thing the WDNR wants. WDNR has the resources to mute this from occuring. The fact is a Minoan style shipwreck is there, been studied for decades. To provide ancillary deciption the story of the Griffon has been amplified to facilate the ruse.

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Michigan Relic
9/4/2020 02:26:32 pm

There are two problems with this. First, the Michigan copper mined by the ancients was what's called "native copper", which means it's found pure in nature. It isn't ore that has to be smelted to get the copper out of the rock. The copper ingots from the Uluburun wreck, however, were made from smelted copper that was poured into a mold. So you would be comparing pure copper that did not require any smelting with copper that had been made pure by smelting. The second problem is that a purity match alone means nothing. Any two copper samples from anywhere can have the same degree of purity. It's the trace elements in the copper that may be able to indicate a match, and as far as I'm aware no trace element matches have been found between Michigan copper and European copper. And even if a match was found, it would not prove a connection; it would only make a connection a more likely possibility than it is at present.

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Stephen R Lagerlund
3/28/2022 05:10:00 pm

Smelted copper requires heating beyond the melting point of pure copper. The copper cow hides, analyzed from that wreck were brittle copper that had a large number of gas pockets through out the material. That happens when copper is melted to its natural melting point...BUT not heated to a higher point (1081 Deg C) required to "smelt" it, (and drive out impurities). Brittle copper is produced when native copper is heated over a charcoal fire. The gases (water) that charcoal produces, expands INSIDE the molten copper and causes holes inside the copper mass when it cools. So IF we assume the cow hides found on that ship were never smelted but only melted (because of the remaining gas holes inside the cow hides), that copper HAD to be over 99.9% Pure, before it was ever heat treated. There is no source of copper in Europe that is 99.9% pure in its natural state. The ONLY way to get European copper to that purity state is through smelting with air blown furnaces to reach that higher level. Air blown furnaces DID exist at that time, so copper of a high grade, similar to Michigan copper, COULD have been produced. But...that copper would no longer have those gas pockets. I.E that copper could no longer be classified as brittle copper (which is what those ship wreck cow hides were).

And regarding trace elements: The people who decided those cow hides came from copper mined in Crete, never checked the trace elements in native Michigan copper.

meth head copper thief
3/24/2023 03:51:38 pm

Published research on the shipwreck copper indicates that it was smelted from raw copper in a furnace and then remelted in a crucible in a second step of processing. Discussed by Hauptmann et al. 2002.

A wide range of other factors mitigate against copper being mined by non-Natives: difficulty in traversing the Atlantic and penetrating the heart of North America, lack of any archaeological evidence of onsite non-native mining, lack of shipwrecks or evidence of intermediate way stations between north america and the Med, the ready availability of copper from sources throughout the ancient world, etc. In the absence of very detailed analysis and published peer reviewed research that could definitively place the origin of the copper in North America the case is flimsy at best. And that is being kind.

Kevin Callaghan link
9/26/2019 07:18:27 pm

Barry Fell?

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s kalyanaraman
9/26/2019 08:05:13 pm

"epigrapher Barry Fell identified as a Norse inscription written in an " https://books.google.co.in/books?id=xlNnw05uDVgC&pg=PT176&lpg=PT176&dq=barry+fell+ox-hide+ingot&source=bl&ots=EvbVWBYbGh&sig=ACfU3U3sGzgIgJ9LeL-XCf4Hgx6fpca_ag&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjY7dW5gfDkAhXR63MBHVL5Aa0Q6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=barry%20fell&f=false

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G Attfield
12/17/2019 08:03:39 am

Like Capt. de Grasse, I too have read that both Great Lakes copper is 99.9% pure, as are the Uluburun ox-hide ingots (but not the other ingots). I am attempting to check the claim in 'The Lost Empire of Atlantis' (LEA) by Gavin Menzies (Paperback edition published 2012 by Orion Books, London ISBN 978-0-7538-2885-4) that the very high purity of the copper is unique to (some) Great Lakes native copper.
Don't be put off by either the title or the travelogue-style narrative - no doubt both were his publisher's idea to make the book more popular and successful.
L.E.A. contains considerable data on the subject of Minoans/Phoenicians and Great Lakes copper, readily accessible via a comprehensive index.
If I may add my own 'penny-worth':
1. The statement from Sodders article stretches the facts too far. The famous 'wall-painting in the Egyptian Tomb of Rekmira' does indeed show ox-hide ingots, but according to a translation of the hieroglyphic superscription "The coming in peace by Keftiou chiefs and the chiefs of the islands of the sea... [to] the king Thutthmosis III" Keftiou is usually identified as Crete at the time of the Minoans and the bearers of the ingots are dressed in style distinctively Minoan.
2. The high purity of the copper isn't absolute proof of Menzies' conclusions. Today, hand-held equipment is available than can non-destructively determine, very accurately, the precise composition, including isotope proportion analysis, of (the surface) of any metallic object. Unfortunately, the equipment is expensive.
Such analysis can be used to demonstrate the probable source of the metal in an object but care is required because the composition can vary considerable across a deposit, and there is no guarantee that the composition of what remains today in a deposit is representative of what was extracted over the course of hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Copper ore was mined in Wales from about 4,000 BP and native copper is found in Cornwall as is alluvial cassiterite (tin ore).
Although, native copper deposits contribute little to copper production today, but the further you go back in time, the more important they would have been.
As too the question of Minoans mining Great Lakes copper, in the absence of hard facts, I'm open-minded; the Minoans/Phoenicians were capable of voyaging across the Atlantic and back in cargo ships like the Uluburun wreck, carrying cargoes of 10 tons or more. They certainly made ocean voyages to western Britain, returning against the prevailing winds and current.

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Don W.
11/12/2021 05:36:48 am

Hey I may be able to help. Years ago I read a lot of this and the big lake in Tennessee with the damm bult in the 30s I think. Flooded a phonecian town that had copper ingots molds dug out all over the area. Its a black and white video. Shows the Bun mold ox hide mold. Also sumac is found in that region from the Mediterranean. Any questions email me and I'll help thanks

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Stephen R Lagerlund
3/28/2022 05:16:56 pm

Wow! What a revelation! To date I've not seen any evidence..at least hard evidence, that raw copper was melted (NOT smelted) in North America into "Buns" or "Ox Hides". That is the one piece of historical data that is needed to tie this entire question up with a nice red ribbon.You really need to pursue this claim. It would be a revelation MORE important than finding the Viking settlement in Canada!

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Kevin Callaghan link
11/12/2021 06:33:41 am

Have you seen the Huron Stone?

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s kalyanaraman
11/12/2021 07:23:46 am

What is the Huron Stone?

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Kevin Callaghan link
11/12/2021 07:30:26 am

not sure how to upload pics here - visit www.huronstone.org

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s kalyanaraman
11/12/2021 07:32:03 am

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/dc/0c/05/dc0c0538d027832ccbc85d6fa97eb5b5.jpg

This mage of one side of a three-sided Mohenjodaro tablet shows two OX-hide shape ingots. The tablet is dated to ca. 2500 BCE. It is amazing that the ox-hide shapes are shown as cargo from Mohenjodaro. More details at the article: Mohenjo-daro boat tablet is Rosetta stone for ḍhālako ox-hide-shape copper & tin ingots cargo of Meluhha merchants
https://tinyurl.com/yxcave2w

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Kevin Callaghan link
11/12/2021 07:39:25 am

I noticed you mentioned Barry Fell. Norman Totten co founder with Fell of MES several years ago left me a voice mail that he couldn't make out what was on the Huron Stone - but that it looked like a mix of old Arabic and North African - he stated if Barry was alive he would be able to dechipher the Huron Stone - Kevin

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Art Burnett
1/19/2022 12:25:09 pm

Howdy, Several points if I may. Great Lakes copper runs 99% pure. This is one standard to follow. Next; Hundreds (thousands) of artifacts can be found in museums and private collections in GL area. That said the amount of copper does not add up to what experts say has been mined. You might try Ancient American Magazine for more photos.

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Abram Aguilar
4/10/2022 05:23:56 am

Some really excellent replies! As a newcomer I’d like to say thank you to all. I’ve many of the replies quite educational and a good follow up to the original blog.
I’ve been devouring any kind of information I can find on this subject for a few years now, and everything I’ve learned tells me that we are dead wrong with the current mainstream “theories”. We are definitely missing a huge chapter of our history and development.
The currently accepted paradigm has become stale and is in desperate need of revision. It’s holding us back. It’s time for change. The old paradigm just isn’t supported by the evidence anymore. There was quite obviously trade between the old world and the new.
In my opinion, there may not be enough evidence to tell us exactly what happened, but there’s just enough, to tell us that things surely didn’t happen the way we think they did.
Good luck to all on their search for the truth. I believe we are all kindred spirits in that regard.

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