
The oldest copper mines in Timna National Park date back to 4500BC - MiriamWeiner
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180419-the-israeli-park-with-a-valuable-secret
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riffraff
I'll need a lot of convincing that this is "Writing and other marks left
behind by ancient miners" and not "random vandalism".

[http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/li...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/64/7l/p0647lb8.jpg)

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salimmadjd
I had the exact thought. Also what writing is that? Historically you would
assume it’s Roman Latin. If that’s one of their evidence, it does not point to
King Solomon temple. As you would assume some Hebrew text.

This article is a cross between tourism PR and faulty reasoning by an Indiana
Jones wannabe

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saalweachter
Greek would also be possible, which would put the writing no earlier than
500BC. To my eye it couldn't pass for the earlier Phoenician alphabet.

When you're talking about a mine that was likely operated for centuries, it's
also hard to say "everyone who worked here was a slave" or "everyone who
worked here was a well-paid highly educated craftsman".

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8bitsrule
Huh. I was just reading yesterday that the Negev is the oldest large-scale
stretch of ancient surface in the world (1.8My).
[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-
we-e...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-earths-
only-civilization/557180/)

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myth_drannon
If anyone is interested in the history of this area, there is an interesting
theory about the location of Mount Sinai.

[https://www.i24news.tv/en/tv/replay/holyland-
uncovered/x6h81...](https://www.i24news.tv/en/tv/replay/holyland-
uncovered/x6h816t)

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pcunite
Copper is used for electrical traces, I take it. If technology allows for
light (laser) based switching, could less metals be used in the construction?

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kesor
Copper allows creating a movement of electrons, which is what you usually call
electricity. Any kind of light, while it allows transferring a signal, does
need to have the signal transformed from electricity to light on one end, and
from light to electricity on the other.

Replacing a very long cable with a fiber that allows transferring the same
signal using light is a way to save on copper. But in appliances themselves,
having signals transformed to and from light is too expensive. So you won't
find lots of light fibers inside of appliances.

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jeffreyrogers
I think the person you're replying to meant having the computing be done
optically (switching by some optical rather than transistor means), so in
theory if you could do that you wouldn't need any copper except to provide
power to your optical computer. I doubt we'll ever get to the point where
optical computing is more cost effective than what we currently have though.

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jonasmst
TLDR: Ancient underground copper mines

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GEBBL
Thank you!

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rplnt
Can we change the clickbait title?

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sctb
Sure thing, we've gone with a representative image caption from the article.

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johncalvinyoung
This is an interesting article hampered by a tenuously related clickbait
title. Please change it.

