The first bronze alloys

[Imperial Dave]

https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2024/10/the-possible-relationship-between-the-first-bronze-alloy-used-by-humans-and-the-deformity-of-some-gods-like-hephaestus-and-vulcan/

Absolutely fascinating...!

[Jim Webster]

Yes, it does make you wonder

[DBS]

My understanding - perhaps wrongly - was that the arsenic is usually assumed to be present in the native ore.

[Imperial Dave]

It was new news to me anyway regarding thr arsenic so had no preconceptions or otherwise. Fascinating though...

[Andreas Johansson]

My understanding - perhaps wrongly - was that the arsenic is usually assumed to be present in the native ore.

Copper ores commonly contain arsenic, and there seems to be no concrete evidence of arsenic deliberately being added to copper to create arsenical bronze in Antiquity.

However, there is evidence of arsenic-rich ores being deliberately chosen for applications where arsenical bronze was desired, notably for the manufacture of thin bronze sheets in the northern Andean area. (See Lechtman, "Arsenic Bronze: Dirty Copper or Chosen Alloy? A View from the Americas", 1996)

It's perhaps worth noting that some of the lame smith gods come from places where arsenical bronze was never a thing. Of course, the idea can have spread along routes of trade or migration beyond the area where it was justified, but if so the number of clearly independent occurences shrinks to approximately one*, which is a slim basis indeed for the hypothesis.


* Of the four mentioned in the article, Wayland and Ilmarinen can't be due to a local memory of the health effects of arsenical bronze production due to arsenical bronze not having been used in the region. Italy did use it in the early Bronze Age, but assuming is that Vulcan's depiction is independent of Hephaestus' is obviously unsafe. Now, comparative mythology isn't really my field, so there may well be more lame smith gods I don't know of - if there were Mesoamerican or Andean ones that would be extra persuasive.