Copper itself, however, as an implement of warfare still maintains a conspicuous place as a metal of commerce.
Copper is a brilliant metal of a peculiar red colour. The only other metal anything like it in colour is titanium.
Like other minerals, copper is not only found in large quantities in mines, but its presence has been discovered in all kinds of soils and waters. You can trace it  in seaweed, cheese, meat, eggs, straw and even in man’s liver, kidneys and blood.

The earliest mining of copper appears to have been done by the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula, where the tunnels, crucibles and parts of the tools used may , still be seen. They were worked from 5000 B.C. to 1200 3.c. In Europe also they must have been worked at a very early date, as in Spanish copper lodes there have been discovered flint mining implements and skulls of a prehistoric type.
Copper was known and worked by the Greeks and Romans and, alloyed with tin, it became the first metallic compound used by man, under the name of “bronze.” The Romans worked copper in Britain and Spain; and in the latter country the copper mines of the Rio Tinto are still very valuable.

In the New World the copper districts of Lake Superior indicate that primitive man worked there, using stone hammers and hide bags to remove the metal hacked off in lumps. The Aztecs and natives of Peru also used bronze implements in their gold, silver, tin and copper mining, so they had discovered the usefulness of the alloy.