BRONZE IN SOUTH AMERICA BEFORE THE ARRIVAL 
OF EUROPEANS. 
By ADRIEN DE MORTILLET, 
Honorary President of the Société Préhistorique de France. 
Long before the discovery of the New World the Indians living 
along the Cordillera of the Andes, from Chile to the Caribbean Sea, 
already knew how to extract and work various metals. 
For a long time we have been sure of the presence among these met- 
als of gold, silver, and copper, but we have been much less certain 
with regard to the use of bronze. 
In spite of oft-repeated assertions, we have until recently con- 
tinued to entertain doubts as to the use of an actual alloy of copper 
and tin in South America before the European conquest. These 
doubts, inspired by a very reasonable conservatism, were founded 
principally on the lack of exact data in regard to the composition of 
the metal from which the objects collected by archeologists were 
made and on the want of positive evidence as to the existence in those 
regions of very rich tin-bearing deposits, which are to-day actively 
exploited. Only through chemical analyses, with their guaranties of 
accuracy, could a definite settlement of the question be reached. 
It is the results of some analyses of this sort, recently made and 
partly unpublished, that I present here. These analyses, fifty in num- 
ber and dealing with specimens as different in their nature as in their 
origin, furnish us with decisive proofs regarding an important part 
of the South American continent. 
A first series (Nos. 1 to 26) was intrusted to MM. Morin fréres, as- 
sayers of the Bank of France. It includes objects collected along 
the course of the Mission of Créqui-Montfort and Sénéchal de la 
“Translation, by permission, of paper presented at the Premier Congres Pré- 
historique de France, Session de Perigueux, 1905. 
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