ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the long process by which a New World metal was acculturated in Europe, using scholarly work by historians of the metal. Although the history of platinum concerns primarily European science and society, the remarkable pre-Columbian advances in the working of this metal have to be mentioned. Nearly all the platinum on earth is contained in its metallic core; movements of the planet’s crust, volcanic action, and a meteor shower known as the Late Veneer resulted in the appearance of a limited number of matrixes of the metal closer to the surface. Reports of a new metal, or a metallic sand or mineral, appeared in European accounts of the New World and natural history written between the 16th and 18th centuries. By the end of the 17th century, the Choco region was populated by Creole Spanish settlers, mostly younger men from the Andean highlands with little prospect of an inheritance.
