At around the same time indigenous Ecuadorians were combining gold with a naturally-occurring platinum alloy containing small amounts of palladium, rhodium, and iridium, to produce miniatures and masks of a white gold-platinum alloy. The metal workers involved heated gold with grains of the platinum alloy until the gold melted. After cooling, the resulting conglomeration was hammered and reheated repeatedly until it became homogenous, equivalent to melting all the metals (attaining the melting points of the platinum group metals concerned was beyond the technology of the day).