> 1st century AD zinc
>coffin bottom in an Essene tomb
>, is this the earliest known substantial zinc item?
Michael,
Craddock - Early Metal Mining and Production, (Edinburgh, 1995) - argues
that zinc production originated in India and was in use by the last
centuries of the first millenium BC. The above discovery would suggest that
techniques migrated westwards and were used on quite a large scale, prior to
the first recorded use in Europe during the medieval period.. For other
early uses of zinc you would need to look east to the Indian sub-continent.
Peter
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