New chemical analysis of Aztec turquoise suggests it didn’t come from the SW US

arstechnica.com

40 points·curtis··5 comments

I fear this is going to feed "because we can't find the mines, it must be China" crazyness.

Cool story, mind you.

So there are copper deposits outside of SW US. But no turquoise? I'm unsure of what the article is suggesting.

I understand that we have to rethink trade networks across central america but I'm more interested in where this turquoise came from. The logical conclusion would be local copper deposits, which the article states there are several of in mesoamerica.

But it never clarifies if those deposits are producing turquoise, or could have produced it in the past. Maybe it was all just mined out was my first thought.

From TFA: "But there are still no known turquoise deposits in Mesoamerica. The explanation, say Thibodeau and her colleagues, is that turquoise deposits tend to be shallow, and they can be mined to depletion in short order. And there are copper deposits all over Mesoamerica. Thibodeau and her colleagues said the turquoise mines that supplied the Aztecs may have been mined out well before Europeans set foot on the continent."

The article headline should be Colombia, not Columbia.

Not in this case, pre-Columbian means "before Columbus".

Colombia was named after Columbus (Colón in spanish) but in this case it is talking about the time before the discovery of America by the Europeans and in particular Columbus in 1492.

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