Copper Smelting in the Americas

Human societies had established themselves in these parts of the world before land bridges were submerged under water in a day. It is for this reason that the safe bet is to assume that the discovery and utilization of metals occurred independently in the americas than elsewhere in the world. The study of ice cores from the andeum regions of south America tells us a completely different story. Scientists believe copper smelting may have been taking place as early as 700 b c e, purely on the basis of the amount of copper pollution detected in the ice corl.