The Odyssey: How Bronze Affected Greek History

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How Bronze Affected Greek History According to Don Talpalriu with Softpedia, copper and bronze weapons were found 500 miles from Athens in 2008. In the Odyssey, Telemachus provides evidence on page 55 that there were five main sources of elements to be found in Greece:
My dear friend, can you believe your eyes?
The murmuring hall, how luminous it is with bronze, gold, amber, silver , and ivory!
This is the way the court of Zeus must be, inside, upon Olympos. What wonder! (Homer Book 4, lines 77-81)
However, only one of those elements would be strong enough to support the force of another man reigning death among his enemies, thus bronze is the only choice for an infantry weapon. The mining of bronze in Ancient Greece ultimately led to significant …show more content…

For example, gold mines could be found in places like Macedonia while copper mines could found on the islands of Delos or Eretria. Also, it is important to note that bronze is a mix of tin and copper so it can not be mined directly from the earth. These metals were primarily used for the production of arms and currency during this time period. These metals were often found through underground mining, also known as deep vein mining. This type of mining was tedious and could only be done through excavation and tunnel building. These tunnels eventually emptied into galleries where ore was obtained, washed and melted. There was often a “relay of miners carrying ore out on their shoulders” while other times wheeled carts were used. Another type of mining was surface mining where ore surfaced in streams or on the ground and collected. An example of surface mining is placer deposits where streams broke up the ore and the dense pieces would settle at the bottom. The Greeks were very intelligent and could tell the “affinity for one type of metal for another” or would follow the placer deposits to the source. Because of the presence of water previously, sometimes the mine was forced to be abandoned because of the lack of control of the water. The Romans attempted to counteract this by digging drainage adits to divert water and filtering the water by percolation. Slaves would often carry the water away with …show more content…

These metals could be found in the ground and dug up through deep vein mining. This produced the weapons and armor that made up the military which helped formulate different attack plans. Thus, The mining of bronze in Ancient Greece ultimately led to significant victories for the military via the defenses formed from this

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