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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tarchon" data-source="post: 1944794" data-attributes="member: 5990"><p>I don't think it follows that people wouldn't try to smelt different rocks because they already knew seven different metals. It goes without saying that if people hadn't gone around trying to smelt different rocks, they wouldn't have known how to smelt any metals, let alone six. The problem with ores is that even if you know what the element copper is, you can't look at a rock and say "oh, that's obviously a copper ore." For one thing, there are several usable copper ores, e.g. azurite and malachite, and, as any geology student can tell you, even a hunk of malachite from mine X may or may not look like a hunk of malachite from mine Y.  Pliny just didn't have scratch plates and diffractometers, which is why half the time when Pliny talks about some type of stone, we don't have the faintest idea what he really meant. Most rocks and minerals, even many metals, were identified strongly with their place of origin rather than being recognized as a particular substance that could occur anywhere. Thus, it stands to reason that, not being able to tell whether a given rock was a metal-bearing ore by any other known means, the ancients must have identifed ore bodies by means of practical experiments.</p></blockquote><p></p>