By around 3,500 years ago, bronze had become the “it” metal in Eurasia, being employed in everything from weapons to tools to trinkets and trash. But while one of the metal’s two main ingredients, copper, was widespread, the other, tin, was not.
The rarity of this ingredient made its loss, in all likelihood, nothing short of a tragedy. So, when an ancient ship carrying a substantial stock of tin smashed into the shores of Uluburun in modern-day Turkey approximately 3,000 years ago, the incident was undoubtedly seen as a disaster.
Today, the concern of scientists is not the loss of this tin (which would’ve armed as many as 5,000 ancient soldiers with swords), so much as its source. In fact, since the ship sank, dragging an abundance of metal down with it, the origins of the material have remained the ultimate archaeological riddle.
Now, a study in Science Advances has solved this mystery, stating that much of the Uluburun tin came from a remote mine in Central Asia. This origin, the study authors say, reveals a complex system of trading routes that moved tons and tons of material thousands of miles to the Mediterranean's multicultural marketplaces.
