Built around 3,000 years ago, Khirbat en-Nahas is one of the largest copper mining and smelting sites of the ancient world. It lies in a desert valley between the Dead Sea

Dead Sea

The Dead Sea , also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world...

 and the Gulf of Aqaba

Gulf of Aqaba

The Gulf of Aqaba is a large gulf located at the northern tip of the Red Sea. In pre twentieth-century and modern sources it is often named the Gulf of Eilat, as Eilat is its predominant Israeli city ....

, now in Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

. There is evidence for sophisticated economic and political activity in the valley about 3,000 years ago and archaeologists think it may be the site of an early organized state.

Archaeologist Thomas Levy of the University of California, San Diego heads a dig at Khirbat en-Nahas that has uncovered an ancient copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

mining operation on a scale that he says can only have been organized by "an ancient state or kingdom."