New enquiry dispute the ten - old myth that ancient mine were environmentally hazardous sites . The researchers from Tel Aviv University show that copper output associated with King Solomon ’s Mines had minimal polluting impacts on mod or ancient population . The resultant upturn our apprehension of early metallurgic diligence and how they impacted the surround .
Since the 1990s , researchers have debated the extent to which pre - Industrial Revolution metallurgic drill impact human health and the local surroundings . The scholarly community is quite torn on the theme . Some conceive that the metallurgical bodily process in the Bronze and Iron Ages introduced raw metallic element pollutants that aredetectableat a global grade , while others argue that these former industries were discrete and hadminimalimpacts on the environs .
In their latest study , Professor Erez Ben - Yosef and colleagues from Tel Aviv University conducted geochemical study at copper production site in the Timna Valley , Israel . These mine date back to the 10thcentury and are regard as one of the potential candidates for the mine consort with King Solomon – the famous milkweed butterfly of ancient Israel mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament , who supposedly rule at this meter .
The researcher obtain that the environmental pollution from the copper color industriousness was minimal and spatially circumscribed , posing piddling risk to the neighborhood ’s inhabitants – either those subsist there today or those farseeing beat . During their oeuvre , Ben - Yosef and colleagues also reviewed past discipline and base no evidence that the ancient copper production unconscious process foul the satellite .
“ We scrutinize two major Cu production sites in the Timna Valley , one from the Iron Age and King Solomon ’s era and another nearby that is about 1,500 long time older , ” Ben - Yosef explained in astatement .
“ Our study was extensive . We take hundred of grease sample from both situation for chemical analyses , create high - result maps of laborious metallic element bearing in the region . We found that contamination level at the Timna fuzz mining sites are passing low and confined to the locations of the ancient smelting furnaces . ”
accord to Ben - Yosef , the concentration of wind – the main pollutant in metal industry – drop down to less than 200 parts per million within a few meters from the furnace .
" By comparing , the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines industrial field as good for workers at 1,200 parts per million and residential area as safe for children at 200 portion per million . ”
These findings take exception the erstwhile assumption about ancient copper industries being hazardous to citizenry and the environment .
“ We show that this is not true . Pollution in Timna is very qualified spatially , and only those working directly at the furnace likely put up from inhaling toxic fumes , while just a short length by , the soil is altogether safe . Moreover , the mate we found between the spacial dispersion of cop and guide concentrations in the soil further point that the metal are ‘ trapped ’ in slag and other industrial wastefulness – which keeps them from leaching into the soil and affecting flora or humans ” , Ben - Yosef added .
The team ’s findings align with several late studies from theWadi Faynanregion in Jordan , which also indicate low horizontal surface of pollution . In one finical study , researchers examined 36 skeletons of hoi polloi who lived at the mine during the Iron Age , and only three of them exhibited signboard of pollution in their teeth .
“ Timna and Faynan are ideal sites for this type of research because they have not been stir up by modern minelaying , as happen in Cyprus for example , and thanks to their juiceless climates the metals in the dirt are not wash off , ” Ben - Yosef bring .
During their examination of past literature on the case of pre - Roman metallurgy and its wallop on a global level , the squad find very little solid evidence to support the bleaker claims .
“ There was a trend in the 1990s , which presented ancient copper output as the first instance of industrial defilement , ” Dr Omri Yagel , a leading investigator in the current study , bring . “ Such statements grab headlines and attract research grants , but they unnecessarily project advanced pollution problems onto the yesteryear . Moreover , the research lit tends to practice the term ‘ contamination ’ to report any trace of ancient metallurgical activity , and this has take to the mistaken August 15 that metal industries were harmful to humans from their early offset – which is plainly untrue . ”
Even when metal production was scaled up to much larger levels , becoming an integral part of human civilisation , it was the toxic lead industriousness that caused the ball-shaped pollution , rather than the metals themselves .
“ A 1990s study contend that traces of bull found in Greenland glass cores had travel through the aura from sites like Timna . This claim , however , has not been affirm by any subsequent study . As researchers confronting the spartan environmental challenges of our sentence , such as climate change , we often run to look for for similar problem in the past or assume that environmental hurt has been an inevitable result of human activeness since the agricultural revolution . However , we must be conservative . While we might label a few pieces of slag on the ground as ' pollution , ' we should not confuse this localized dissipation with regional or global environmental befoulment . ”
The study is put out inScientific Reports .
