Copper—Man’s Long-Time Servant
By “Awake!” correspondent in the Zaïre Republic
COPPER has been serving man’s needs for thousands of years. Tubal-cain, who lived before the Noachian flood of over 4,300 years ago, is described in an ancient historical document as a “forger of every sort of tool of copper and iron.” Also, an ancient report regarding the territory of Israel said that it was “a land the stones of which are iron and out of the mountains of which you will mine copper.” (Gen. 4:22; Deut. 8:9) Here in Africa native peoples in the distant past mined and smelted copper too.
Copper in the free state, in nugget form, has never been plentiful. So for ancient people to obtain copper was no easy task. After clearing away the surface earth and rock, crude tools were used to break up and pulverize the copper-bearing ores. Then the ore had to be melted in order to separate and recover the metallic copper.
Up until our twentieth century natives of Shaba, Zaïre Republic,a mined and smelted copper from the gemlike green ore called malachite. In the nineteenth century the various tribes produced between ten and fifteen tons of copper a year, all by hand labor. Let us take a look at how these peoples obtained copper.
Native Mining and Smelting
The three main copper-mining tribes were the Bayeke in the east, the Basanga in the central area and the Baluba to the west. Copper mining to these peoples was a sacred profession. A sorcerer directed the work. Each mining group had its professional secrets, traditions and superstitious rites.
In May, at the beginning of the dry season, mining operations began. By this time the harvest was in, and so the all important growing and harvesting of food was not interfered with. The village chief signaled the start of the copper campaign for the year by calling, “Tuye tukadie mukuba,” literally, “Let us go eat copper.” This, in effect, meant: “Let us go enrich ourselves to provide for our life.”
As the village got ready to move to a temporary encampment near the malachite deposits, the women prepared the food. Axes and picks were gathered, as well as baskets for carrying the malachite, and antelope-skin bellows for increasing the furnace’s heat. When the caravan started out, sorcerers and chiefs invoked the spirits for success.
Arriving near the deposits, and preferably near a river, grass huts were erected. Then, while women and children gathered surface malachite, men went to work mining in open pits. Other persons prepared charcoal for the furnaces by roasting wood in a pile covered by mud.
As the men worked from year to year in the open pits, these grew to fifty and more feet deep, and more than 160 feet in diameter. And, just think, these huge mine pits were dug by hand! After the ore was recovered, it was pulverized, and then washed in reed baskets in the nearby river. Now it was time for smelting the ore.
Barrel-shaped furnaces were constructed, using mud and termite hills, the clay of which is especially heat resistant. The furnace was usually three feet or more in height. Small holes were drilled in the side, and a draft was provided by the antelope-skin hand bellows inserted into the holes. The furnace was then fired with charcoal and other combustible material. About a hundred pounds of malachite ore were added.
Imagine the scene as the furnace heated. The master foundryman added bits of sacred bark or sprinkled ritual water on the furnace. The two men operating the hand bellows worked feverishly to heighten the fire to a searing heat. Spectators chanted and danced to encourage their efforts, and to invoke the spirits.
Now green flames began to rise from the caldron, betokening a heat approaching 1,083° C., at which copper melts. At the side of the furnace a hole emptying into a clay mold stood ready for the molten copper to appear. Then the seemingly miraculous transformation occurred. The formerly green malachite poured forth as molten copper. This was considered the work of the spirits.
Smelting continued at the campsite from mid-August to October. Then the villagers broke camp and returned home, where the copper was remelted to achieve further refining. Then it was formed into pots, pans, basins and spoons. Warriors were equipped with helmets and shields hammered out of copper. Also, X-shaped crosses formed of copper were used as money, being exchanged for desired goods.
Another form into which the copper was shaped was wire. A crude copper bar was elongated by hammering on a large stone anvil. The lengthening and slenderizing process continued by further pounding on a smaller anvil. The rod was then drawn into small diameter wire by various ingenious methods. A copper ingot, less than six inches in length, was stretched to a length of nearly fifty feet with a diameter of only .02 inches! The wire was used in making bracelets.
It is not known how far back the copper-working activities of the African tribes date. But the industry became so developed that an estimated 700 tons of copper were produced by the tribes in this section of Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century! About that time, however, Belgian colonists arrived and native mining and smelting methods gave way to modern ones.
Present-Day Copper Production
Now large companies under government control supervise and operate the mines, along with the necessary smelting facilities. Some open-pit mines have become great step-sided canyons, well over half a mile deep!
Instead of men working with crude picks and axes, explosives dislodge the ore deposits. Then giant mechanical shovels gobble up to 15.5 cubic yards of ore at a time and drop this ‘bite’ into waiting dump trucks capable of carrying away a hundred tons of rock at a time.
The ore is processed by washing in water, pulverizing, and then sifting it to the desired granule size. Copper ores generally have less than 4 percent copper, but five tons of ore may yield as little as twenty pounds of copper. And yet over 5,750,000 tons of copper are produced each year throughout the world. Huge modern furnaces and an electrolytic recovery process separate the copper much faster and more efficiently than did earlier methods.
Today copper serves man in thousands of ways. Since copper is the best low-cost conductor of electricity, about half the copper produced is used in the electrical industry. In the home, it is often the basic material in locks, pipes, plumbing fixtures, doorknobs, candlesticks and lighting fixtures.
Thus from the days of Tubal-cain, over 5,000 years ago, right on down until today, copper has been a most useful servant of man.
[Footnotes]
a Formerly Katanga province, Belgian Congo.