A ductile, malleable metallic element used in many functional and decorative artifacts. It was one of the first metals to be exploited by man because, like gold, it can be found in the native form, pure and requiring no smelting. It is most frequently obtained from a variety of ores: the carbonate (malachite), oxides, and sulphides. Shaping could be done by simple hammering, which served also to harden the metal. 'Pure' copper may contain up to one per cent of impurities and the concentrations of these impurities may indicate the source of the ore. Arsenical copper alloys (2-3% arsenic) have some advantages over pure copper in ease of casting and in the hardness of a hammered edge. In the New World, cire perdue casting of copper is first recorded in the Paracas culture of Peru and by the European conquest, the technique was practiced from the southwest U.S. to Argentina. Copper occurs fairly widely in the Old World, and was first used in Western Asia before 8000 BC as a substitute for stone, though it did not come into common use until after 4000 BC. Metallurgy dawned in Egypt as copper was cast to shape in molds (c 4000 BC), was reduced to metal from ores with fire and charcoal, and was intentionally alloyed with tin as bronze (c 3500 BC). The earliest surviving examples from Egypt are small artifacts such as beads and borers of the Badarian period, c 5500-4000 BC. Great copper hoards occur in the Ganges-Yamuna alluvial plain and just south of the lower Ganges, and elsewhere in India and Pakistan.