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Phoenix666 writes:

South America's mining industry supplies half the world with copper. The world's largest mines are located in the Andes. Yet just when copper production began there has remained unclear, until now. Very few artefacts from the early high cultures in Peru, Chile, and Bolivia have been preserved. Now, however, researchers of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in Villigen, Switzerland, are on the trail of this mystery. Through analysis of ice from the Illimani glacier in the Bolivian Andes, they found out that by around 700 BC, copper was already being mined and smelted in South America. Their findings are published in Scientific Reports, an online journal of the Nature Publishing Group.

In South America, copper has been mined and smelted for around 2700 years. This has now been determined by researchers of the Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in Villigen, Switzerland, through analyses of glacier ice from Bolivia. Copper mining in South America has enormous importance: Chile and Peru are the two largest copper producers in the world; Chile alone accounts for more than 30 percent of global copper production. Yet the beginnings of this essential industrial sector have remained obscure. The only certain evidence came from the time of the Moche culture, which flourished on the northern coast of Peru between 200 and 800 AD. Numerous copper objects from this culture, such as jewelry and ritual tools, have been found. From earlier times, however, there are few finds and no written records.

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