Evidence has been found of an ancient gold trade route between the southwest of Britain and Ireland dating to the early Bronze Age.

Researchers from the universities of Southampton and Bristol have used a technique called laser ablation mass spectrometry to evaluate chemical composition of 50 earliest gold artifacts in Ireland. These artifacts were present in the collections of the National Museum of Ireland.

Upon assessment, the researchers came to know the gold used to make these objects was from Cornwall in Britain.

Study’s lead author Chris Standish from University of Southampton in Britain was of the view, “This is an unexpected and particularly interesting result as it suggests that Bronze Age gold workers in Ireland were making artefacts out of material sourced from outside of the country, despite the existence of a number of easily-accessible and rich gold deposits found locally”.

It is not possible that at that time methods of extracting gold was not known in Ireland. It has been said so as large scale exploitation of other metals was present. One of the main reasons behind importing the gold for production was an ‘exotic’ origin was considered as an important property of gold.

Another very interesting thing is in that time, in comparison to Ireland, there was much less gold in circulation in Cornwall and southern Britain. It means that people have realized the worth of trading gold for other ‘desirable’ goods rather than to keep it.