"Industrial pollution may seem like a modern phenomenon, but in fact,
an international team of researchers may have discovered what could be
the world's first polluted river, contaminated approximately 7,000 years
ago.
In this now-dry riverbed in the Wadi Faynan region of
southern Jordan, Professor Russell Adams, from the Department of
Anthropology at the University of Waterloo, and his colleagues found
evidence of early pollution caused by the combustion of copper.
Neolithic humans here may have been in the early stages of developing metallurgy by learning how to smelt.
The research findings, published in Science of the Total Environment,
shed light on a turning point in history, when humans began moving from
making tools out of stones to making tools out of metal. This period,
known as the Chalcolithic or Copper Age, is a transitional period
between the late Neolithic or Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze
Age."
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