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North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Critical Minerals Alaska – Tin

Alaska hosts more than 100 occurrences of this alloying metal critical to human progress since the dawn of the Bronze Age North of 60 Mining News – April 1, 2018

Last updated 9/24/2020 at 7:18pm

Bronze age weapons and tools critical mineral tin Alaska

Lubor Ferenc; Wikimedia Commons

This pair of swords from 10th Century BC are examples of the strategic advantage bronze, a tin-copper alloy, provided civilizations during the Bronze Age, an era that spans more than 2,000 years of human history. In the Information Age, we continue to almost exclusively use tin in alloys, mixtures that keep tin on the list of critical minerals.

Primarily associated with cans, cups and roofs, tin may not be the flashiest metal on the market, but it has been a strategic metal that has defined human progress since the onset of the Bronze Age around 5,500 years ago and is on the list of minerals critical to the security of the United States even today, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"In a congressionally mandated U.S. Department...

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