Arlington Mallery certainly thought so. He dedicated many
years of his life to this research, and excavated many
ancient furnaces in the eastern US, but unfortunately the
professional archaeologists were not interested.
And yet, some professional metallurgists did agree with his
results.
Dr. Earle E. Caley, was a professor of chemistry at The Ohio
State University. He reviewed the metallurgical content of
"Lost America", by Mallery, and endorsed some of his
results. Caley in 1953 was already a published
archaeo-metallurgist, and later became noted for his studies
of the pre-Inca Moche Indians of Peru, who smelted copper
from the ore beginning in 200 AD.
[quote]
Copper Casting In Ancient America?
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To my knowledge, Caley never reversed his positive
evaluation of Mallery's evidence of copper melting and
casting by North America's pre-Columbian Indians. It is
really strange that no American archaeo-metallurgists have
seen fit to follow up on this.
[unquote]
Nothing strange at all, in my view. This is called politics.
According to Mallery, over 100,000 copper objects, such as
tools and ornaments, have been found in North America. But I
guess this wasn't enough to change the established opinion
that the Indians weren't sophisticated enough to do such
things.
So today, our archaeology textbooks still read that the
North American Indians did not know how to melt and cast
copper.
Regards,
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto -=O=-
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It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in
nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of
thought -=O=- John K. Galbraith