Copper ore may be the inspiration for the legend of King Solomon .
archaeologists have been digging out the site of Slave Mountain in the Timna Valley, which was the main production center of copper from the 11th to the 9th centuries BC.
A new study found that the copper mine in the Negev Desert in Israel (probably the inspiration for the legend of King Solomon's gold mine) was abandoned 3,000 years ago, when people there used all their plants to produce smelting charcoal.
researchers studied charcoal fragments from ancient melting furnaces in the Timna Valley near Eilat . From the 11th century BC to the 9th century BC, the copper industry here was very prosperous.
They found that for about 250 years, when mines and smelting plants started operating, the quality of the wood used to make charcoal deteriorated because people there used up all the nearby platinum and acacia tree and started using much lower quality wood, such as the trunk of palm tree .
About 850 BC, the copper industry was abandoned, and the remaining barren desert would not be developed for a thousand years.
Over time, they use less and less wood, and it looks like they are collecting wood from farther and farther away.
Timna Valley is one of the earliest places in the world to smel metal copper from ores. This furnace was used for smelting about 6,000 years ago.
Ancient industries
Timna Valley is one of the earliest places to produce copper in ancient times. He said the region is an extension of the Great Rift Valley in Africa, so many minerals deep in the earth's crust are exposed near the surface, including copper mines.
The earliest evidence of smelting copper ore in the Timna Valley dates back about 7500 years ago, in the late Neolithic copper stone age . The secret of alloying tin and copper into wear-resistant bronze was discovered about 1,000 years later.
In a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports on September 21, researchers looked at charcoal fragments from a later period: Iron Age about 3,000 years ago, when Timner's copper industry was at its peak.
Wood was initially burned in an underground pit with only a small amount of air to make charcoal, which burned hotter and longer during copper smelting.
To determine which types of wood are used to make charcoal, the researchers used electron microscope to check the remaining slag during the smelting process. Their analysis revealed the cellular structure of the wood used, which indicated that in the early stages of the Timna copper industry, platinum and acacia were widely used, but later on lower-quality wood was used.
Eventually, these mines were abandoned, partly because it might be difficult to find good wood nearby. It was not until the Nabatai and the Romans began to import better wood for charcoal that Timna's copper industry had about 1,000 years before it started again.
about 3000 years ago, the Timna Valley located in the Negev Desert in Israel, near Eilat, was a major copper mining and smelting industry.
King Solomon's mine
Looking for wood in the Timna Valley to make charcoal is one of the reasons for today's desert conditions, although it was a very dry environment at the beginning.
When you start cutting down trees, it will trigger snowball effect . Fewer trees mean fewer animals and less water throughout the ecosystem, and some of the disappearing things never come back.
The 11th century BC to the 9th century BC were the period in which Israel king David and his son Solomon ruled Jerusalem , although some scholars now believe that David and Solomon may not exist.
Charcoal burns hotter and longer than the wood that made it, and researchers sample charcoal from different stages of the ancient copper industry.
The copper in Timna Ancient Industry may have been the source of the famous wealth displayed in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and was later interpreted as gold by ancient writers.
In 1885, Victorian writer H. Ryder Haggard set his adventure novel "The Mine of King Solomon" in central South Africa, which he thought was a gold mine, and has since been adapted into movies, comics, television and radio shows. It is not clear whether Haggard borrowed Solomon's gold mine myth or made it up by himself.
Archaeology shows that David and Solomon ruled limited territory and it did not reach the copper ruins in the south. The first sign of the expansion of Judas to the arid zone of the south (even then, not as far away as the copper mine site) can be found in the 9th century—that is, a century after David and Solomon.
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