The Old Copper Culture of North America 

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I vote u do a video on Polynesian expansion, and origin theories. Lots to talk about there and I think it’s an underrated topic, yt needs a closer look at the complexities behind this event.

As a First Nation Canadian I think it would be awesome if you covered the wars between the different tribes in Canada

The Wisconsin Historical Society Library has a small museum that has a very large and varied collection of these copper artifacts, I wandered in there one day and was amazed, I didn't even know that the natives used copper tools.

I'm from Michoacan, Mex My ancestors have using copper for centuries, if not thousands of years. It's still abundantly used today...

I'd be super interested to see a video on Arsenical bronze, it was an alternate method of making bronze with Arsenic instead of Tin, with some arguments about it actually predating the "traditional" method.

At the mound site Poverty Point in NW Louisiana copper from the Great Lakes region has been found. Poverty Point, which dates to around 1800 BC until 1200 BC, is also a World Heritage Site.

i have yet to finish the video, but i just wanted to say i appreciate the calming narration and straight forward presentation in your videos. biological/archeological anthropology was my favorite course in college, so thank you for scratching that itch in my brain!

Hey hey! What do we have here? Very well researched video and gorgeous visuals!

And people still say the America's have no history its crazy

Every archeological find had an owner cussing and looking everywhere for it

I am very interested in Mississippian cultures. Here in Mississippi we are taught in elementary that all north american native people built mounds as a way to bury their dead. I would like to learn about mound building, Mississippian cultures, or anything related :) Love your vids

I’d like to see you cover the Chaco culture, especially their discovery of the northern lunar standstill cycle. It’s one of my favorite ancient cultures to learn about.

Metal working in the Americas is certainly fascinating. The arsenic bronze of the people of Tiwanaku is just as fascinating as the copper working at the Great lakes and I think they also is worth a vid, a lot of people today seems to think that gold was the only metal used in pre Columbian Americas and that isn't true, but besides some possible iron working by vikings in Newfoundland the arsenic bronze was the height of metallurgy before 1492 at least to my knowledge. If you wonder why arsenic bronze wasn't more wide spread, the Incas and Mayans used it a little but making it is a rather dangerous process and while it is far superior to copper it is less effective then tin based bronze. A similar but not identical metal was used in pre historian Eastern Europe for a while (it had some components but a bit different mix of them). Anyways, super interesting. :)

I've been binge watching your channel recently, and i love it. Here are some topics I'd love to see you explore: •Indo-European migration and culture •Rise and fall of the Celts •Germanic peoples and their development from Indo-Europeans •the Haudenosaunee and their known history/customs •history of the Ainu

@NORTH02 should be writing a much needed history book revised version for school kids who still think stone age is all about stones and wild sapiens and Neanderthal were ancestors

The true GOAT of RU-vid narration. I love your stuff and your soothing voice is cherry on top

The Mississippians made all sorts of regular tools out of copper. Axes, arrowheads, a copper knife fashioned to look like a stone knife and I read that the looting company pulled a “doctor’s kit” out of Spiro Mounds made entirely out of copper. The doctor’s kit was reported as lost by the looters shortly after discovery so I don’t have a better description, but it wasn’t all just stuff for the elites during Mississippian times. You should really make a video about them.

Staying on the topic of Eastern North American cultures from the archaic-Woodland period. The red ochre culture would be extremely interesting

It blows me away I only just found this channel. It's great! Thanks for the hard work and great info!

just love when I realize it’s a north 02 notification. always did, but the quality of your stuff has gotten so pro since about a year. thanks a fuckin bunch for sharing with us. keep it up big dog!

Another excellent video and an absolutely fascinating subject. Thank you sir.

Good video. I like you never knew that Native American societies worked metal, in the modern day USA and Canada at least, until relatively recently. I think you're statement at around 14:38 pretty much hits the nail on the head on why copper tools fell out of fashion in what is now the United States. I am less sure about the control elites had over the copper trade. We know that trading networks were huge across the continent, so could a commoner from a culture associated with the Mississippians get access to a small amount of copper ore if they really wanted to? Maybe? But if they were more concerned with accessing materials for practical reasons, stone might have always been the better choice. I have always felt that our understanding of Mississippian culture at its height was not well understood and its hard to confirm just how much power an elite would have. At another point in the video, you mention that there were experimental tests were conducted on recreations of copper tools to determine their durability. I'd love to read them if they are accessible somewhere and not locked behind some journal paywall. I had been under the impression that pure copper actually made a relatively poor tool, as it was very malleable and alloys (which the Old Copper Culture didn't have) were stronger. Please don't take this as me challenging your video, I think you did a great job of explaining the topic, I'd just love more things to read about it. The Old Copper Culture (or complex?) has always been fascinating to me and its great that well made videos are popping up to challenge misconceptions about pre-columbian America. edit: lol I just saw you put your sources in the description, I'll just go there. Thanks for doing that too, lots of youtubers dont bother.

Quality content as usual pal, and I'm glad that you're learning Italian! Se ti va puoi fare un video sul neolitico italiano e sulla cultura Terramare. Ancora complimenti e tanti saluti!

As a Northeast Ohioan, I found this to be an even more interesting video than usual. We were heavily influenced by the Indian culture here and I would like to know more about it. Just add it to your growing list of things people want to see. I suspect you already have a very long list:-) Thanks.

North America once again being absolutely stacked resource wise

Can you do an episode about farming but on a worldwide scale? How did the idea originate, did it pass from group to group, or did humans discover it across continents within a couple thousand years of each other? Is it entirely a misconception that farming sprung up quickly and dominated as the way of life vs Hunter gatherer? You might have something similar already, I’m not sure. I’ve just never heard a solid explanation for how farming took over the world…

perfect timing!

Pre-Columbian Caribbean peoples and cultures. It would be very interesting to gain a deeper understanding of the very first people encountered in the "New" world, specifically the Taino and the Caribs, but Arawak cultures in general as well.

I wonder if they ever dropped a hunk of ore into hot coals on accident, and the wind blew just right and smelted it. Like, they vaguely knew about smelting, but it was a parlor trick because native copper was so abundant.

Thank you for this video, I, like most, had no idea they used any metal, and had no idea pure copper could found in such quantity..

The Neville Museum in Green Bay has a decent display of copper artifacts, lots of petrified wood and saber tooth cat fossils as well, if you are in town its definitely worth a look.

I love it when you drop a video and can’t wait to carve out the time to watch it as soon as possible.

Always a pleasure and benefits with you thanks and 💖

You could do a look at how cultures even up to the modern day use salvaged metal from shorelines and junk etc to make arrowheads and tools etc.

The old copper culture went hard

6:48 I'm immediately reminded of those rocking knives you can get which are great for dicing, particularly herbs.

Another outstanding video! You spoil us.

Wonderful video as usual. Thank you!

another brilliant piece! I can like the video as soon I open it because I know it’s gonna be amazing as always!

We Turtle Islanders considered copper more valuable than gold or money. Although it fell out of favor due to colonial interference, we are starting to get back to work reclaiming our history and waking up the old ways.

Bloody love the 'Copper Age", Ancient Egypt was cool as hell because it's one of the only places that didn't just have smooth transitions between things like bronze and iron. There were periods where stone, copper, bronze and iron were all used at the same to shifting variable extents.

Even higher volume in the future please. Much easier to lower than to raise.

Wow. This was an incredibly informative video. I live in the region and had no clue that copper working ever occurred in the native population. I would love to find a artifact from the old copper culture one day. Thank you and keep making great vids!

A video about the first signs for the use of Iron in Anatolia would be so great 😃👍

Great video, always worth watching twice :) I was wondering if there is enough content for a video about nets, and it's history and innovation. I'm curious if they were used in parallel or if the tech came before or after other known hunting/fishing technologies of the ancient past. Thanks again, my day is always a little brighter after some North 02

growing up in michigan and having at least two field trips a year to our local reservation and being taught by the people who live there i wasn't aware that a lot of this info wasnt widely known and it makes me really take into account how lucky i was in that aspect to learn the things i did so early on

Cold working copper would probably have been beneficial as work hardening would occur which would almost double the hardness of the resulting tool.

Great video! Would really like to see more lore about early native American life please! Honestly, just any native groups really please

Thank you for correcting my same belief

Always a good day when North 02 posts

To me, this episode highlights the importance of agriculture as a stabilizing factor, for technology to take root and vocations to influence society into adopting them

The Great Lakes copper crescent knife looks very similar to the ulu - the women's knifw - of the Inuits in Greenland 🇬🇱 there there's been ulu in copper from the Great Lakes, meteoric and Norse iron, and of course stone like crystallised quartz, amethyst, blue and brown laced agate, and carnelian

Awesome, can't wait to learn something interesting.

i was aware of the Copper Culture here in the US but not to this depth. Why it changed to what might have seemed a regression, not sure but can take a guess. Winters in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where most of the copper came from, can be really brutal. Easy to imagine a ready supply from a handful of local families coming to an abrupt end with a particularly severe winter combined with maybe an unusually high incidence of Wendigo attacks... Following that, while there may have been an unabated demand for it, now if someone wanted it they had to send someone to the location who might not be as familiar with the area to hunt for the material; not nearly so easy as simply trading for it. An abrupt change in availability could be a very simple answer to why the change from everyday implements to elite body adornment. But that's just a guess... Still have a small nugget of copper i picked up on a Lake Superior beach in the UP, not far from Copper Harbor, on a visit to the area with my family when i was a kid.

Heyyy man the things that you are making are awesome please can you do a video of proto - indo - europeans

I'd like to see a video on the ancient celts

Notification gang

GREAT MATERIAL, as always

I'm a sucker for bronze and copper age tools and weapons.

Can you provide a link for the 1.5 billion pounds of copper ? It's the equivalent of 40 years of current global production..

Hello from the copper country, those tools they made are so cool

fantastic video! thank you for helping dispel myths about us, we are treated like cave men stuck in the stone age when in reality we used things like bones and stone for mass produced tools. Can you do a video on the armour of the northwest cultures? specifically their helmets? they all have unique shapes but i hypothesize that their shapes arent aesthetic primarily but actually primarily serve to counter different weapons and aesthetic is secondary. some things id like to add. the societies of the great lakes havent had "elites" in their societies. They have complex systems of social sanctions on all leaders, chiefs were an elected position with very neutered powers. Instead of a heirarchy like you might be thinking of where its top down, the power was held by those below them because they dont have political immunity and they can be removed if they abuse their power. The main reason for switching was because of the cheaper caloric expense like you said but you left out the important fact that because of how native copper was formed it meant its structure was very brittle and susceptible to breaking if struck with force from the wrong angle. This is why smelting makes metal so strong, because unlike native copper which have nuggets and crystals you measure in inches, but smelting turns them to micrometre big crystals which lets it pack more tightly and bond stronger. Like how carbon can be easy to crumble when its coal but when its a perfect lattice like in a diamond then its super hard. The fragility of native copper is why it fell out of tool use in specific for them, while the decorative and religious jewellery and pendants and such stuck around. Not so much because a shift in social dynamics, if you study the ojibwe and iriquoian political structures you find that egalitarianism has always been central to their philosophies, from elected cheifs, to equal distribution of goods but also things people might not know like how chiefs are expected to be generous with their wealth or theyd be seen as unfit, and even have their horded wealth taken and given to another chief the people felt suitable. I mean imagine if you could just say "im sorry mr president but we all agree you're doing a bad job lets have another election" thats crazy to us in our current society. also im not a great lakes native im across the continent from southern Alberta so im not as well read on the nations out east.

When you said that they broke the stone off copper nuggets by heating them and then pouring water on them I wondered how that was discovered? Oh yeah! In the sweat lodge! Imagine using one of those nuggets as a heating rock in a sweat lodge. And seeing the stone break off. (It happened to someone first, and once the shock wore off they taught others) Sandia peak behind Albuquerque is full of malachite. Albuquerque had pre-contact pottery. Shreveport had beautiful hand shaped pendants made of sheet copper. The Old Copper Culture had no pottery. As was said by medieval explorers about Central Asian nomads, "their fires were not hot enough to get metals."

The Sudbury Impact meteor brought up valuable metals-Copper-to the surface of the earth north of Lake Superior in Canada.

Wonderful video. I came from Indiana and was well aware of the Wisconsin Copper Culture but have always wondered why with Arsenic available more readily than Tin a Bronze Age did not develop.

I recently found a hefty nugget of float copper in a collapsed bluff alongside lake Michigan. Crazy to think how I was likely the first human to touch and see it since it had been buried there so long ago

Is there any credence to Harvard prof's "America B.C" regarding Egyptians hiring Phoenicians/et al bringing copper from Mississippi down from Great Lakes; helped build Collosas of Rhodes? Any spectrographic materials available. Especially at such purity~

Being a mixed Apache I really appreciate when NORTH 02 covers the actual, real American culture(s). So much information has been taken from us and we face nothing but "Oh you're playing victim" or just bold faced racism from every color. North, thank you.

2 things I would find interesting are the development of pottery and the precontact civilizations in the Amazon basin and central America.

There was a lesser known and much smaller copper culture in the Pacific Northwest along the lower Columbia River basin and up to Puget Sound. With the exception of a very few and extremely rare pieces that were used in weaponry, it was all ornamental. Most was hammered into small flat sheets and rolled into long hollow beads to adorn clothing or made into a necklace when strung on some cordage and combined with shell beads. I've owned a number of the long copper beads over the years, some still with the original cordage and beads attached. If you're looking for an interesting subject for future videos, one subject I would suggest would be on the Lovelock Cave in Nevada. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovelock_Cave Also one of my favorite artifacts to collect here in the west are Paleo Crescent blades. They came and went with the Clovis culture, and are only found in the western US. Their use remains somewhat of a mystery, but I suspect they were used to tip an Atlatl dart to hunt waterfowl since they are almost always found where water is or once was. Great videos, keep it up.

EARLY F YEAH ILY NORTH 02

Awesome video! Have you done a video on the nomadic medicine folk/herbal healers that traveled throughout the Great Lakes region, often welcomed by different tribes/cultures? I've only come across references to them once or twice in books during my herbalist studies many years ago.

Copper from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan has a unique signature. I has been found in artifacts all over the world. It was traded. It showed up in Egypt and South America. The Vikings had used it also.

Wisconsin native from bad river. History is so interesting

Another misconception I've recently been disabused of is the lack of horses in pre-columbian north America. Apparently there is a population of horses that was utilized by peoples in the northeast and possibly elsewhere in North America for hundreds if not thousands of years prior to European contact. It's a disputed topic, but one that's very interesting and could turn anthropology on its head again.

Your content is amazing! Thanks again

I would love to see the medowcroft rock shelter site covered in detail ,its a fascinating site dating back 19,000 years

First min in I've learned three new things. If this culture had European animals like cows, pigs, and sheep to domesticate, they would have gone through much the same route as Europeans with cities and diseases and everything that comes with that kinda of civilization. Brilliant people.

Copper is a very beautiful color once polished, ie many cars have copper / bronze paint. I've very interested in the tribal trade networks, these must have been vast, but this required safe passage, there must have been country wide agreements regarding traders.

In ww2, a lot of Germans who found themselves behind enemy line also frequently became caravels

Tired 5am rainy Monday before work… HEY! A new North O2! Gonna be a good day, Tater! Was not disappointed.

As I was watching your video (loved it, thank you), I was waiting to see whether copper was used in woodworking, and to what extent. And as you said, it was used, though limited. But it leads me to one of my fascinations which is Viking boat building. (First knowledge ability to create a vessel, the magnitude of the labor, and then the motivation and courage to go out into the cold ocean). My understanding is they first felled and split trees using stone tools. (which is amazing onto itself.). And then at some point they discovered how to create metal, and then tools. (How in the world this technology unfolded… how that threshold of knowledge and craftsmanship was crossed, I can only wonder). And from then on only it was the metal tools in the making of boats. I lack the detailed understanding of which metals are used in woodworking. (Hardness ranking?). I assume it’s all about smelting and the level of hardness. I guess that makes all the difference. Fascinating to look at the effect of metal on history, building, exploration…!!

im from the upper peninsula of michigan its an under appreciated fact of history especially since i wanna do archology its nice to have it in ur bark yard so to speak

great video!!!

I hammered raw copper with smooth egg-shaped stones. To make a rod first about three-eighth inch in diameter. Heated by fire it seared itself into a handle. Continued stone hammering gave me dagger blade. It helped me win one October 31 costume contest.

Nice video, very informative. Can you make a video about the Caral civilization or the Moche culture in Perú? Thanks

Do you think that there’s a specific reason why metals like iron never got popular in the americas? It’s something I’ve often thought about, and I wonder if there was a specific reason or they simply never found the need to work with iron

millions of "natty tools only " modern knappers cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced ... when they learned that the old copper culture was around when they were still making dalton types ! very interesting

those cresant shaped knives are for stripping bark and shaving limbs in bow making.

An important consideration with edged tools... some of the lithic materials can be far sharper and harder than copper.

I had never heard of this before. Ill have to read more on it.

Annealing would be a requirement if they (we?) were cold working, otherwise the piece quickly becomes work hardened and will crack before you can put any real shape into it.

I! Love! Your! Content!

Your audio is very BASS and would benefit from being brightened in the 2500 Hz region. Thanks for the video.

Another fantastic video! As for future content, I'd be really interested in learning more about the Aurignacian and Gravettian industries, and what distinguishes the two.

There is evidence that they abandoned copper and went back to chert. Not sure why they wouldn't progress technologically in metallurgy. It's a super interesting topic. Thanks for the awesome content. 👌

Just because they where found in that location does not mean that it was created by native americans

Do a video an hour long video on the moundbuilders of America. Cover the Cahokia culture and the Mississippian.

Always makes me wonder, how does ancient civ separated by geography actually know how to utilize a rocks and makes them into sword or knive. Like, who had the first idea?? Who is the first smelter? How is it known throughout human civilization?