Credited to Ecuador. The Tumaco-La Tolita culture spanned the coast of northern Ecuador and southern Colombia, so the origin is shared across the modern border; the dates are the conventional range for the culture, not taken from the sources seen.
How it began
The Tumaco-La Tolita culture lived on the Pacific coast from Esmeraldas in northern Ecuador to the Buenaventura area of Colombia, and is usually dated from about 350 BCE to 400 CE, though some chronologies start earlier. Its smiths worked gold, platinum and tumbaga, a gold and copper alloy, mostly into masks and body ornaments. The earliest metal known from the area is a gold sheet from Las Balsas, near La Tolita island, dated between 915 and 780 BCE.
Platinum occurs in the region as grains in river gravels, mixed with alluvial gold. The smiths recognized it as a separate metal and used it on purpose, which sets them apart from other ancient goldworkers.
Before it existed
In the ancient Old World, platinum-group metals show up in goldwork only as accidental specks. They entered objects because placer gold was contaminated with them, and the smiths did not add them deliberately. One rare exception is a small strip of native platinum inlaid in a bronze box from Thebes in Egypt, where it was probably mistaken for silver. In parts of Ecuador and Colombia the situation was different: platinum was made into small objects in its own right, sintered with gold, and used for bimetallic and platinum-clad pieces.
How it works
Platinum melts at a temperature that no ancient furnace could reach, so La Tolita smiths worked it without melting it. The technique is a form of sintering. Fine grains of alluvial platinum were mixed with gold and heated, so that the gold bound the platinum into a mass that could be worked, although the platinum itself never melted.
A study of a La Tolita gold mask in 2002 found that the smiths also made a platinum-rich foil in this way and applied it to a gold surface as plating. They used the contrast between white platinum and yellow gold for effect, for example on a gold mask with platinum eyes and teeth now shown at the national museum in Quito.
What lasted
European metallurgists did not work platinum until the 18th century, at least 1,400 years after La Tolita. The La Tolita smiths are described as the first artisans in the world known to work the metal.
The finds also shaped the study of ancient American metalwork. Marshall Saville reported on the archaeology of the Esmeraldas coast in 1908, the gold and platinum pieces then became widely sought by museums, and in 1937 the Danish metallurgist Paul Bergsøe published a technical study of how the gold and platinum had been worked.
Where it stands today
Research continues with modern instruments. David Scott and Warwick Bray reviewed the archaeological and metallographic evidence in Platinum Metals Review in 1980, and Meeks, La Niece and Estévez published a detailed analysis of platinum plating on a La Tolita mask in the journal Archaeometry in 2002. Max Uhle visited La Tolita island in 1925 and published the first maps of the site. Pieces are held in museums in Ecuador, including the national museum in Quito, and abroad.
