A Bronze Age Disappearance: Who Took 1.5 Billion Pounds of Copper from the Great Lakes?

The history that we were all taught growing up is wrong. My name is Scott Walter, and I'm a forensic geologist. There's a hidden history that nobody knows about. There are pyramids, chambers, tombs, inscriptions. They're all over the world. We're going to investigate these artifacts and sites, and we're going to get to the truth. Sometimes history isn't what we've been told. I'm heading to Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Here in the Great Lakes region, more than a century ago, an incredible relic was found, a tablet with cryptic symbols. Symbols, I think, are the key to unlocking an epic unsolved geologic mystery. This area was once home to some of the largest copper deposits in the world. Billions of pounds of copper lay hidden underground, and someone knew that. At some point prior to Columbus coming to America, much of the Great Lakes' copper disappeared. And I'm here to figure out where it went, who took it, and why. So George, you're probably wondering why I asked you to take me out to Isle Royale. Yeah, what's up? Obviously, you know, Isle Royale was a place. I know they did a lot of mining. Yeah, you bet. I love looking at the mines. They're all over the place on the island. How many mines do we think are on Isle Royale? Do we have any idea? They're constantly finding new ones. You know, some of the estimates for their region is 5,000 to 10,000. Whoever was here mining thousands of years ago took a lot of copper out of here. What kind of quantities are we talking about? Between a billion to a billion and a half pounds. A million? A billion to copper. How long would that take? I mean, my god. Well, one of the estimates from one of the engineers was 10,000 people for 1,000 years. That's mind boggling. I mean, when you talk about these numbers, it's so vast. And I know that the Native Americans did use copper, but they've never found anything even close to the type of numbers that you're talking about. So the question is, where did all that copper go? I think I know. I'm firmly convinced that it's connected to the Bronze Age. Bronze Age in Europe? In Europe, yeah. I think people who came over here, this is where they got the copper to fuel the Bronze Age. Who took the Great Lakes copper? Where did it go? To answer that question, I have to go back to the point in human history when copper forever changed the world, the Bronze Age. 5,000 years ago, man learned to combine copper and tin together to forge an even stronger metal, bronze. It was a game changer. Now, he could make more useful agricultural tools and more deadly weapons. Things like daggers, swords, and axes. With more weapons came more advanced warfare. Nations became more powerful, rising up in an attempt to spread their culture around the world, all thanks to copper. But where did they get it? While sources for copper can be found throughout Europe, in places like the Swiss Alps, England, and Ireland, some people question whether there was enough mineral ore to account for the massive amounts needed to fuel the Bronze Age. I'm one of those people. And this tablet, found in Newberry, Michigan, could prove it. Check this out. What's this? It's a Newberry tablet. You know, I think it could be a key here, tying together the copper culture of whoever was at mine here thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist anymore. But this thing was found 1896 over by Newberry, Michigan. A couple of guys tipped over some trees. This thing was in the ground. It's got 140 characters on it. So the tablet's gone? It's gone. Oh, man. It apparently was destroyed. You know, this is in beautiful condition. But how many great artifacts have we heard about? They're gone. This could be a link to the copper culture. And I'm thinking it's all speculation, but it could be a way. I mean, if they're mining the kinds of copper that we think they were, they had to keep some type of records or tabulations. This could be connected. I know that going back, copper was actually more valuable than gold and silver. So that's a pretty strong motivator to come all this way. It's the mystery around here. When you read the old papers from the early explorers that came, there's no remnants of who. You know, one of the other things that's really important was the purity of this copper here. Copper, like most metals, has a unique fingerprint. I can test the purity of copper in the Great Lakes and compare the results to the purity of Bronze Age copper to see if it's a match. The big question is, where did the copper come from that fueled the Bronze Age? You know, we're talking 5,000 years ago. This might be the only clue that ties it together. This place is fantastic, George. It is awesome. I know we spent a lot of time out here. Why don't you tell me about the island? Well, you know, it's unique. It's a national park, so it's well preserved. There have been a lot of different cultures that have come through here, from fishing to mining. It's the largest island on Lake Superior. It's 45 miles long and 8 miles wide. It's kind of hard to get here. You know, it's 50 miles from Copper Harbor. You have to take the ferry over, or if you have a big enough boat to do it yourself. It has a unique wolf population as well. Hey, I've read about that. I guess the wolves are struggling, aren't they? The wolf population is dwindling, and they're worried about it becoming extinct. What are the numbers down to now? They were down to nine this last winter. Nine? I know their disappearance is a mystery, just like the disappearance of this copper is a mystery. Ah. So here we go. This is an example of one of the pits on the island. This pit could very well have been one of the ancient pits, but we do know that it was worked by miners in the 1840s. Oftentimes, the more modern miners, the European miners that came over and explored for copper found ancient pits and worked over the top of them. It just went crazy in the area, and the entire Keevanaw Peninsula became one giant mining site, producing more revenue from copper mining than even the California Gold Rush. Wow. That's a lot of copper. And speaking of that, I think you said 5,000 years is one of the numbers you tossed around, is the age of some of these pits. How do you know that? Actually, on one of the pits on the island, there was one giant piece of float copper on the bottom, and it was supported by oak timbers that had been cut. There were cut marks in the timbers that they analyzed. And then so they took some carbon samples of that oak and placed it between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. Wow. Yeah. This is a pretty small pit. I'd love to see something bigger. After a night on the island, we're heading out to the distant north shore to visit the Manong Mine. It's one of the largest ancient mines on the island, and I want to see if there are any clues there to who did the mining. I also want to understand just how many mines were worked here thousands of years ago. It turns out the wolves on the island could be an unexpected clue to understanding the size and scale of this mysterious mining operation. I've done a little bit of reading about this big mystery of how did we lose a certain segment of the dwindling population here, the wolves? Yeah, we've had 10 years of pretty high wolf numbers. But now the wolf population has been coming down dramatically. And in 2012, this last year, they hit their lowest level ever, just nine wolves. Nine wolves. What do you think happened? This spring, we did find out that three wolves had died in a mine shaft. And here we've got some bones of one of those wolves. This came from the shaft. This one was one of the wolves in the shaft. Yeah, we fished him out, along with two other wolves. So two adult males and then a female pup. So I'm curious, how deep did they fall? Well, it's a unique, dangerous mine pit. I mean, even for island oil, about 10 feet of sheer wall down to a water surface, which was probably frozen. I couldn't hit the bottom. The biggest pole I could stick down there. So are there any other large mammals, or is it just wolves? No, we've seen a dozen or so moose that have fallen in and died in mine shafts. Doesn't that tell you something about the quantity of mine shafts and abandoned mines? Yeah, I mean, there's hundreds of shallow pits from mining for thousands of years. The one he went into was by far the deepest and most dangerous I've seen. You know, in the article that I read this spring, they left me with a distinct impression that the wolves are probably going to go extinct. What do you think? On this island, in terms of probability, they got about a less than 50% chance. The dwindling wolf population gives me a sense of just how many ancient mine pits there are on Isle Royale. The remnants of this mining network are so vast that animals like moose and wolves can't avoid falling into the pits. This makes me more determined than ever to get to the bottom of who's responsible for taking all this copper out thousands of years ago. Now, we're on our way to the Monong Mine, which is located on the far north shore of the island. It's one of the largest mines on Isle Royale, consisting of deep pits and miles of tunnels. In the late 1800s, a thriving mining industry existed here, and hundreds of miners worked the pits. It was these miners who uncovered evidence someone else had already been here mining copper, possibly prehistoric people. And I want to discover who those people were. Oh, well, Scott, this is what I've been talking about. This is the Monong Mine. Wow, that's great. Isn't it something? What's that, 50 feet? I don't know, man. It's certainly a lot deeper than the other shaft that we saw. Does that go underneath there? It looks like it keeps going. It does, actually. Not only can we see the shaft from the top, but we're going to go down over here, and you can see the shaft from the side as well. Took an easy way, huh? Took the easy way, man. How about this place? This is awesome. Isn't it incredible? This is amazing, yeah. Well, you can see plenty of copper carbonate here. That green carbonate is obviously a breakdown of copper. That's a telltale sign. We see it all the time. See all these fractures sort of running in this direction? Yeah. It's probably copper in this seam right here. Copper has always been seen as a miraculous metal. We know now that its ions kill bacteria, which is why it's used for pots and pipes. It's valuable. That's why people steal it from abandoned homes. During World War I, more than 270 million tons of copper came from here in the Great Lakes region. But billions of pounds of copper was mined here long before modern times, maybe by whomever left the Newberry tablet behind. This is a significant operation here. There was a lot of copper pulled out of here. It goes back quite a ways. You can see the tracks that are left from the 1800 miners and as they worked over the top of the ancient miners. I think the chances are pretty remote that we're going to find evidence of any ancient mining. I mean, the blasting that's been done here, whatever might have been here, is surely gone or buried. Do you think there's any chance I could get a sample from here? You know, you can't take any samples, any copper, off the island because it is a national park and it's a preserve. I understand. But we're not far from the largest piece of flow copper that anyone has in their possession. And I know for a fact you can take a look at it, maybe get a sample. If nothing else, they have copper samples from the area there that we can get our hands on for sure. George told me scientific dating on some of the pits proved they were mined 5,000 years ago. I'm convinced that Great Lakes copper was used in the Bronze Age. There may be a scientific way to link it to Bronze Age copper, but I need a sample so I can test its purity. If I find a match, then someone from Europe was here mining Michigan copper 5,000 years ago. And that would mean a complete rewrite of American history. I'm in northern Michigan investigating the disappearance of millions of pounds of ancient copper. I want to know who took it. I also want to know if there is a connection between whoever mined the copper and the Newberry tablet, which has symbols on it that I think could crack the case. I think that the disappearance can only be explained by miners that came across from Europe during the Bronze Age. I'm searching for a piece of Michigan copper that I can test for purity to find out if it matches with ancient copper discovered in Europe. But first, I'm checking out a massive example of local copper. Wow. Look at that. That's incredible. So how big is it? Over 28 tons. You know, I can see obvious glacial striations. So clearly, this is a piece that the glaciers picked up, carried it, and dropped it. We see the scratches of being scraped along the ground as it was carried. So Judy, I just came back from the Monong Mine. My friend George took me there, and we saw some mining pits. And we talked about some of the quantities, the estimates of over a billion pounds of copper that was mined. So what do you think about the idea of ancient people coming from across the Atlantic and mining copper in this region? It's the only thing that makes sense. Where did they get all the copper needed to build the Bronze Age, when bronze is made from mostly copper? Why wouldn't they come? I agree with you. Why wouldn't they have? So they have every reason to do it. What about native legends? Do you know anything about that? Well, yes, there are some stories about fair-haired, fair-skinned people having been here. And perhaps Native Americans even left a message about that. Are you talking about the petroglyphs in Copper Harbor, the ship petroglyph? That's the one. I've looked at that petroglyph, in fact, and I've done some research on it. Personally, I think it's probably maybe 1,000 years or somewhere in there, but it could be much older. I'm not sure. What do you think? That ship, I think, is so significant. It's so different from anything Native Americans would have done. The shape of the sail, it's quite square. I looked at that very carefully a couple of years ago, and it has sort of a Minoan-style square sail. The Minoans were a Bronze Age culture from the Greek island of Crete. It was not until around 1900 that archaeologists discovered evidence for the Minoans, but little is known about them. What is known is that the Minoans had a huge sailing and trading empire that dated back to about 3,500 to 5,000 years ago. That's precisely the time that copper in America was disappearing. If I can test Michigan copper and match its purity with that of ancient Bronze Age copper, then I might be able to prove the Minoans were America's mystery miners. Could the Minoans have been involved? They very well could have been, since they were noted for being marvelous mariners. We know the Minoans got farther than Crete, farther west than Crete. They were looking for copper, no question about it. We have the copper here. They had the sailing technology to get here. I mean, this would be a huge blow to the standard history that we know. There is a way I think I can test this. It would be great if we could get a sample to test that copper for trace element analysis. I know I can't get a sample of this, but we might be able to get one somewhere from up here. Any suggestions? Sure. A friend of ours who has a charming shop called D'Euphra's Tourist Trap, he also is an amateur geologist. Who do I ask for when I go there? Hooli. In my search to uncover the mystery of who mined the ancient Michigan copper, I've seen photos of a long lost stone tablet found in the area and a petroglyph of what could be a carved Minoan trading ship. Perhaps the two are connected, and the symbols on the tablet are Minoan. And if I can find a piece of Michigan copper that tests as the exact same purity as a Bronze Age sample, it could mean that the Minoans got their copper from here. All I need is some Great Lakes copper to compare, and thanks to Judy, I have a lead. Hey, how's it going? Good, good. Scott Walter, how you doing? Not bad, not bad. Say, Judy Johnson, do you know her? Oh, yeah. She said I should be looking for a guy named Hooli. That's me. That's you, OK. Do you have any copper? We got lots of copper. What I'd like to do is, I'm wondering if I might be able to get a sample of copper. I think we can do that here. Do you have some I can maybe look at? Yeah, yeah. Matter of fact, I was just prepping these two here, and I found them in the box downstairs and forgot I had them. And these are, this is float copper. Say, you're familiar with the giant piece of copper back in Marquette, right? Yes. OK, so this is essentially the same thing, just a smaller version. Yeah, a smaller version, yeah. It comes in all sizes. Say, there's one other thing I'd like to ask you about. I don't know if you know anything about it, but I've been looking into something called the Newberry tablet. Oh, yeah. It's gone now, but do you know anybody who might have some information about it? Well, yeah, I mean, when they found it, there was this big hurrah. I mean, they didn't know whether it was Egyptian or whatever, you know. And luckily, there was a Mining Journal newspaper guy there that took pictures of them. OK. And then they got stuck in a guy's barn, and then the weather wore them down because they weren't baked clay. They were just, you know, in that just raw form. But they have them down there in a museum in St. Ignace down there, part of the tablet. Wait, wait, wait, you mean it still exists? Yeah, yeah, it was just down there, matter of fact, two weeks ago. Hooli, the fact that that tablet still exists is really important, because if I could get it under my microscope and do some weathering studies, I might be able to potentially tie the Minoans with the New World up here. And the Michigan copper mystery might be solved. It would be a big deal. I can't believe the Newberry tablet, long thought to have been destroyed, still exists. I think it's just the clue I need to solve the case of Michigan's mystery miners. When two woodsmen found the tablet by accident in 1896, they had no idea the importance of their find. When I found out it still exists, I delved deeper and discovered something else. The script on the tablet is thought to be Minoan. But based on what I've learned so far, I see no chance it could have been faked. That's because the tablet was discovered before the Minoan culture was even known to exist. Archaeologists didn't find evidence of the ancient Minoan culture until 1900, four years after the woodsmen found the tablet. Now, I've come to the museum where the stone tablet is kept to conduct an analysis using forensic geology. Welcome to Fort DuBois. I'm Connie. Hi, Connie. Scott Walter. Scott, glad to meet you. Say, I'm a forensic geologist. And I was referred to you by a man named Hooley. And he mentioned to me that you had an artifact here that might be helpful in some research that I'm doing about the ancient copper culture. Have you ever heard of the Newberry tablet? Yes. We have them right here. You have them? You do have them? We have them in this museum, yes. How did the artifacts get here? Dr. Benson, in the 60s, was a collector of many artifacts. And he received a phone call from Fort Algonquin in the area. And he decided, why not? So he looked at the Newberry tablets. He purchased them. He brought them here. Tablets? Well, it came in pieces when it sort of came in. So you have more than one piece? Yes, we have more than one piece. They've been here ever since? They've been here ever since, yes. I understand that they were found in Newberry. And the Smithsonian analyzed them. But at that time, they had no clue. So they put them in the fraud, in the hoax. In the fraud category. Yes, yes. Yeah, I've heard that before. I don't know if they're a hoax or a real thing. Let me ask you a question. Has anybody looked at them in modern times, scientifically, that you're aware? No, not at all. I think I can help you with that. Wow. Well, I think I'm done with the preliminary examination. And I have some good news and some bad news. But I'll start with the bad news, OK? This is nothing I'm sure is going to shock you. But the tablet's in really tough shape. And it needs some attention, serious attention. Otherwise, just another handling, it could be gone. The good news is, I was able to make out some of the characters on the tablet. I know there's at least three, possibly four, maybe even a fifth character that's still there. And I think it looks like what we have here on this photograph taken in the late 1890s of the tablet. I know for sure we have this Trident figure here. It's definitely there. And it's Minoan script. A weird thing. I heard of some more Minoan type stone. You heard of some Minoan script? Yes, some scripts, some symbols. Beyond this? Yes. Well, where was that? Underwater. Underwater? Underwater. And how did they get underwater? I have no clue. Well, I have some ideas. Are we talking about a lake? OK, whereabouts? Northern Wisconsin area. Oh, really? OK. Well, you know, thinking about it, that may not be so strange after all. And I don't think anybody threw anything into the lake. We have something called isostatic rebound or uplift of the land. And a few thousand years ago, what is now at the bottom of a lake may have been dry land at one time. So if there's Minoan script carved on a tablet or on rocks at the bottom of a lake in northern Wisconsin, I will find it. Well, how are you going to get to it? What's underwater? Diving. After looking at the Newberry tablet, I'm convinced the Minoans could be the ones responsible for mining the copper in the Great Lakes thousands of years ago. If there really are Minoan symbols in the bottom of a lake in this area that match the ones on the tablet, I need to see them, and I've tracked down the guy who found them. If you look back at the time of the Minoans and during the Bronze Age, it took a lot of copper to make the amount of bronze that was made. I don't think there's enough there to account for all the bronze. And I think a lot of people have been pondering that issue. So where did it come from? I mean, that's the question. And to me, it seems reasonable that here's where they came. That's correct. There's no question. They came for the pure copper that lined the Great Lakes region, especially in upper Michigan. And they left a lot behind to let us know that they were here. You found these? Underwire, 15 to 20 feet in depth. Symbols made out of stone made into mounds to match some of these. So what are we looking at here? This is the fish symbols, like a boomerang, the W. These are amazing. You know, I just got done looking at what's on the left of the Newberry tablet. And the W was one of the symbols that I was able to make out on that ancient stone. These symbols that I found here clearly match many of these on this tablet. So what you're saying is your symbols in the bottom of the lake and the Newberry tablet are all connected by ancient copper miners? Yes. Is there any that are still intact? In fact, there is, but not too far from here. I'd like to show them to you. You realize that if these are legitimate and they were made by the Minoans, that means that we had the Minoan culture coming here thousands of years before Columbus. I mean, this is a big deal. Scott, you ready to go back a few thousand years? You bet. Lead the way. Well, Scott, whatever those piles once were, they sure look like they've been messed with. There's not much left. Yeah, they've all been tampered with. Let's get out of this cold water. I'll tell you about it on the boat. I appreciate guys like you that are out there looking for these things. You were absolutely right that one structure underneath there did look like a W. It was a little flat on the bottom. You know, it didn't loop up in the middle like most Ws do, but it definitely was nicely symmetric, and it was a beautiful symbol down there. There's no question about that. The symbols do match. But I have to tell you that I'm a little skeptical about what I saw in the water. The rocks there look to me like they had not been there for a long time, and I would have expected more sediment buildup. The mounds were not like I found them several years ago. I don't know what the situation is there. It doesn't mean that, you know, some of them aren't legit, or there are others in other places. It's not so much the mounds that make me convinced that the Minoans were here. And we're still doing a lot of investigation. But we do know we're walking in ancient footsteps. I'm not convinced that the rock piles I just saw in the lake were left here by the Minoans. But Scott Mitchon is yet another local who believes that they were here, mining the copper from the Great Lakes region. And a simple test could help me prove it. If Michigan copper is as pure as copper from Bronze Age Europe, and specifically as pure as the ingots from one of the only Minoan shipwrecks ever found, then there's an ancient connection I think is impossible to deny. I was up in the UP, Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And I have a sample of copper right here. I understand it's very pure. And I'd like to find that out for myself. Is that something you can help me with? Absolutely. So can you tell me a little about the technology we're using today? Yes, this is a technique known as particle induced X-ray emission, or PIXI for short. And so what we've got is a accelerator that's going to generate a high energy beam of particles. Those are going to shoot down through that tube. And as those ions hit it, the sample will emit X-rays. And those X-rays can tell you things about what's inside the sample. Am I right that NASA used PIXI to analyze the rocks that came back on the Apollo flights? And they're using it for Mars exploration too, right? I believe that's correct, yes. What I'd like to try to do is use this data to compare with, hopefully, samples of Bronze Age copper to see if there's a match. And if there is, well, this would prove that ancient miners came to North America long before Columbus. And that would change history in a profound way. I think copper mined from America's Great Lakes was used to fuel the Bronze Age in Europe thousands of years ago. I think the ancient miners were the Minoans, a culture from the island of Crete who also left behind the new buried tablet, which is undoubtedly old and may be written in their language. And I think a high-tech analysis I'm doing that compares the fingerprint of Great Lakes copper with copper pulled from a Minoan shipwreck could prove it. So firstly, if we look at the larger spectrum, we see these peaks that clearly are due to copper. And there's lots of it. Big peak there? Yep. And then if we look at the finer results, the trace elements, we see a bit of germanium, arsenic, and some even more exotic things like rhodium, terbium, and phthalic. OK. So that's a pretty unique fingerprint. I mean, these things are represented here. They're just so much smaller than the copper. Yes, they are. OK. What was the percentage of copper? Were you able to determine that? Well, at least of the metallic elements present in the sample, something from 99 to 99.9% is copper. 99 plus percent copper. Well, that confirms what we were told. What we suspected is that that copper was extremely pure. So that tells us that the visible copper that we see is very specific to those areas. And obviously, your results confirm that. That's great. Knowing the purity of this and the purity of the copper from the Minoan shipwreck are the same, I'm feeling better than ever about my theory that Bronze Age copper came from America. I've investigated whether copper from the Great Lakes was used to fuel the European Bronze Age. What I can say for certain is that the purity of Michigan copper is a match to the purity of copper found on a shipwreck of the Minoans, a European culture from the island of Crete prominent during the Bronze Age. The Newberry tablet is another clue that links the Minoans to the Great Lakes region in ancient times. More than a century ago, a couple of woodsmen started chopping wood and stumbled upon this incredible discovery. This stone tablet was wrapped in tree roots, so it must have been there for a long time. They saw these symbols, but had no idea what they were. Only years later would we know that these symbols were likely Minoan and the importance of their discovery. What I've seen rewrites not just American history, but also European history and gives us new and critical insight into understanding the evolution of civilizations on both sides of the Atlantic. I'm here to unravel the deepest mysteries, and what I'm discovering might change history in a profound way.