Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Source: See Penn.Museum link below. |
AD 1519, central Panama: the conquistadors were angry. They had promised the Spanish court a mass of gold in return for investing in their risky transatlantic voyage. But having failed to find the legendary gold mines of the region, they had resorted to looting the treasuries of the local chiefs and the grave goods of native cemeteries. Then came the shock. As the soldiers began to melt down the heaps of ornaments they had gathered up, they discovered that scarcely anything was made of pure gold. Rather, the metal was debased with large amounts of copper....
Here is the link for the rest of that article, Confounding the Conquistadors: Tumbaga's Spurious Luster.
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You might also like the article entitled Pueblo Indians Adaptation of Spanish Metallurgy, which discusses a 17th century site. Here is the link.
Here is one illustration from that article.
It reminds me of some of the small pieces that I was picking up when cobs were found earlier this year. Some of those were modern, but not all of them.
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It reminds me of some of the small pieces that I was picking up when cobs were found earlier this year. Some of those were modern, but not all of them.
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The Aztecs certainly had lots of gold, but nowhere near as much as the conquistadors believed. It turned out that all that glittered was not necessarily gold - much of it was an alloy called tumbaga.
The metallurgical skills of the pre-Columbian Indians went unrecognized for centuries prior to the pioneering work of Dora M. K. de Grinberg and others in the past fifty years or so. De Grinberg, an Argentinian archeologist working in Mexico, doggedly followed tenuous leads to uncover ample evidence that the ancient Indian metalworkers were far more knowledgeable than had previously been supposed...
Here is the link for that article.
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Archaic Period Point Recently Found in Plowed Florida Field.
Find and photo by JamminJack.
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A couple days ago I posted a photo of an axe or tool and had it mislabeled as an Archaic point. I went back and made that correction in the old post. This is actually the Archaic point that was found the same day as the other item. It measures about two inches and was among the finds that Jack and his buddy found in a newly plowed field.
Jack said, I did some research and found there was an outpost and old post office (1800s) nearby...
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Thanks Jack.
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The Georgia governor despite a shelter-at-home order, opened the Georgia beaches, which like almost everything these days, was a very controversial move.
Here is the link.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/georgia-reopens-beaches-coronavirus-shelter-in-place-order
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Here are today's Florida numbers from the Florida Dept. of Health dashboard.
You can use this link to access the interactive dashboard.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429
As you know the models depend upon data and assumptions, and the data, in my opinion is not very good. There does not appear to be an overall highly consistent system and many states have not been reporting at all.
If you take the numbers from Germany, they have about a 1% coronavirus death rate, while the mortality rate for Spain and France is about seven times that. That is a huge difference, which I believe must be due to measurement or reporting differences rather than population differences or differences in treatment.
Anyhow, you can keep up with the Florida statistics by using the FDOH dashboard.
You certainly can't say that coronavirus is irrelevant to metal detecting while the beaches are closed and we are under a variety of orders and advisements.
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The Treasure Coast surf today is 3 - 5 feet and tomorrow is supposed to be 5 - 8 feet.
Be safe, be wise,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
