Metals of antiquity

[2][3][4][5] A special case is platinum; it was known to native South Americans around the time Europe was going through classical antiquity, but was unknown to Europeans until the 18th century.

The first elemental metal with a clearly identifiable discoverer is cobalt, discovered in 1735 by Georg Brandt, by which time the Scientific Revolution was in full swing.

[6] (Even then, cobalt might have been prepared before the 13th century by alchemists roasting and reducing its ore, but, in any case, its distinct nature was not recognised.

Copper beads dating from 6000 BC have been found in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia,[9] and the archaeological site of Belovode on the Rudnik mountain in Serbia contains the world's oldest securely dated evidence of copper smelting from 5000 BC.

The practice of alchemy in the Western world, based on a Hellenistic and Babylonian approach to planetary astronomy, often ascribed a symbolic association between the seven then-known celestial bodies and the metals known to the Greeks and Babylonians during antiquity.

Additionally, some alchemists and astrologers believed there was an association, sometimes called a rulership, between days of the week, the alchemical metals, and the planets that were said to hold "dominion" over them.