Serbian Site May Have Hosted First Copper Makers

In an article in Science News of June 25, 2010,  it is reported that a Serbian location may have housed the first copper makers,

....the remains of a  settlement in southeastern Europe is approximately 7,000 years old....oldest dated copper smelting...

...but maybe advanced metallurgy techniques are much older and were in use by even older civilizations....maybe an interesting thesis for Book 2, huh?

Ten Thousand Coins, Seventeen Hundred Years

Roman coins were recently found in England after being buried for more than 1,700 years. More than 10,000 of them. I wonder else is buried, waiting to be dug up or exposed by flood or the random landslide. http://www.stropshirestar.com/. From June 23, 2010 edition.

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Quick Novel Summary

A handyman stumbles on a piece of junk in the yard of a Washington, D.C. homeless shelter and, finding it interesting, turns it over to a priest who manages the agency. Later the priest, not interested at first, does a quick Internet search and is stunned. Could this discard -- a royal mace or short staff, maybe a museum shop replica -- be related to a controversial archeological find unearthed in Syria, a relic that mysteriously attracts thousands of pilgrims seeking miraculous cures?

A few weeks earlier, a group of young D.C. professionals meet in Virginia hunt country to celebrate a birthday. It is a typical champagne-drenched get together until a late night incident spoils the party. On a moonlit walk near Culpepper, VA they have a murky sighting of men on horses, thousands of them in the distance, parading in massive clouds of dust and martial music. The experience is too earthy and massive to dismiss, but they can't agree on what they have just seen. Frightened, and realizing the experience cannot be explained, they agree to forget it.

But it is not so easy to ignore or escape a hidden world that is closing in on the principal character, Rick Reynolds, and his friends, and in the days ahead, that world, the ancient mace and the soldiers participating in America's most epic historical battle will come together on a hill, a passage, near Gettysburg, Pennsylvia.

Gettysburg Passage, a novel by John J. Callahan

Gettysburg Passage is a contemporary novel, taking place largely in the Washington, D.C. metro area around 2010-11. Much of the action occurs between Culpepper, VA and Emmitsburg, MD, locations all within easy driving distance of the federal district. The Gettysburg Civil War battle campaign also happens to be largely within this area.

If you are browsing on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or visiting a bookstore, you would look for such a book probably under Mystery & Thrillers. The book is largely complete, currently in final edit. It is an e-book and will initially be available from Amazon.

Gettysburg Passage is not a Civil War book and not a story of the battle which took place between July 1-3, 1863. Personal favorites that describe the campaign include Gettysburg, The Confederate High Tide, from Time-Life Books, ISBN 0-8094-4758-4, revised 1987; and Gettysburg, A Testing of Courage, by Noah Andre Trudeau, Copyright@2002, ISBN 0-06-093186-8.

I have told what Gettysburg Passage isn't. Then what is it?

Gettysburg Passage is a novel exploring very big "what ifs?"

For instance: 1) It is well understood that the building blocks of western civilization evolved with the migration of ancient peoples from the Asian steppes and thawing rolling hills of eastern Europe as they fled the dying ice age and eventually settled near ancient Greece and the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East. What if the survival of a key faction of those peoples and their basic, still-forming ideas depended on the leadership skills of a person or persons from present day America?