Industrial pollution may feel like a modern development, however, an international team of scientists uncovered what might be the world’s oldest contaminated river, polluted about 7,000 years ago.

Within a now-dry riverbed in southern Jordan, researchers found proof of early contaminants from copper smelting. Neolithic humans here could have been in the early stages of developing metallurgy.

The Earliest Pollution Ever Found

According to the study team’s findings, published in Science of the Total Environment, the discovery points to a time when humans started transitioning from making tools out of stones to forging tools out of metal. This period, referred to as the Copper Age, is a transitional period of time between the late Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age.

“These populations were experimenting with fire, experimenting with pottery and experimenting with copper ores, and all three of these components are part of the early production of copper metals from ores,” study author Russell Adams, an anthropologist at the University of Waterloo, said in a news release. “The technological innovation and the spread of the adoption and use of metals in society mark the beginning of the modern world.”

People produced copper at this point in our history by incorporating charcoal and the blue-green copper ore commonly discovered in this region in pottery vessels and cooking the amalgamation over a fire. The method took a long time and was labor-intensive. Because of this, it took millennia before copper was a central component of human culture.

This team tried to recreate the process as accurately as they could:

A lot of the items produced in the very first phase of copper generation were mainly symbolic and satisfied a social function within society. Obtaining uncommon and unusual items was a way involving individuals attained or represented status.

Over time, communities in the area grew and copper generation expanded. People constructed mines, then large smelting heaters and factories by around 2600 BC.

“This region is home to the world’s first industrial revolution,” Adams said. “This really was the center of innovative technology.”

However, metal creation took a toll on surrounding life. Slag is a major waste product of smelting and it is comprised of metals like copper, lead, arsenic and mercury. Plants soaked up these metals, people and livestock ate them and so the pollutants accumulated in the ecosystem.

Adams said the contaminants from copper mining and generation likely caused widespread health difficulties, including infertility and premature death. Scientists have discovered high amounts of copper and lead in human bones going back to the times of the Roman Empire

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Image credit: Barqa Landscape Project/University of Waterloo.

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