Once some convenient, often whimsical, false idea becomes essentially a structural component within the institution, it’s ‘elite’ champions and their well-paid ‘janissaries’, more than anyone, know how hard and ugly the walk-back, or fall, would be. There are a lot of them, in the Mediterranean. Just do a search for 'oldest shipwrecks, copper'. PS: The name ‘Cyprus’ translates to ‘copper’. The fact that both samples tested ~99% copper is not particulary convincing – I mean, that’s the point of refining metals isn’t it? Simple economics would determine that the longer trip was just not viable and would serve no purpose if the source for the metal was nearby and well established. It may be more reasonable to speculate that rather than refining and transporting a few tons of copper at least 7 or 8000 miles from Lake Michigan, through Lake Huron, then Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and many other lakes to reach the St Lawrence seaway, to the coast, thence to Crete using fairly simple sailing vessels, the ancients would have looked to Cyprus, the source of copper for the nations of the Mediterranean and surrounding region as recorded in all the Ancient records. ) and wonder, 1) HOW the Romans quarried, provisioned, and erected it, 2) why no ‘Roman historian’ mentions the effort, 3) WHY it is in a state of ruin, and 4) WHY (if they built it) they didn’t repair it? All that work for not? It’s much more plausible as the work of the pre-Ice Age/Atlanteans, using those small elephants that were endemic to pre-Ice Age Cyprus, as domesticated draft animals. But if sticking with the prevailing theory, we look at this impressive stone construction on the island (. But my theory, as you may know, is that the pre-Ice Age culture (Atlanteans, if you will) were a mature culture, and responsible for most of the metals attributed to ‘the Bronze age’, which may be more ‘the age of great finds’ and resettlement of desolate ruins.

But that is WELL BEFORE we are to believe humanity started smelting metals. The earliest extant texts (Linear B) call the island that (Cyprus) – from way, way back in the BC.

Ancient glyph