Download and play Tacticus for Free today: play.tacticusgame.com/DanDavisHistory USE CODE: NOVHELLO to get 2000 gold and 50 Blackstones for FREE! Thank you very much for watching my video.
Yeah I keep telling myself I'm not gonna play for long but I find it hard to stop. The rounds are just the right length so you wanna start another one.
@@DanDavisHistory Was a good video, I always love Ancient History, since I was a Child. Before the Internet I went to every library Where ever I was and Went to the History sections to find the oldest books I could. I lived in St. Louis for almost 5 years. They have a great Library, I didnt get to see the New York city Library when I was there in 1992, but I did use their call in request line for certain information about Black Voters before the Civil war. They were so nice and helpful, The first Recorded Black Vote(they didnt track the race of voters in 1831) but in Chicago 1832 they recorded Black votes in a Ombudsmen race. It was a nice referance to my essay about Political evolution in the USA and proof that not All Black American Ancestors were Slaves.
These sort of massive scale projects always serve to remind me of how clever ancient humans were. It helps demystify the people of the day, and emphasize how unchanged we are on a fundamental level.
Why would you need to demysify them? They're the same humans as we are today. Knowledge will grow and fade but human ingenuity and intelligence is only limited by our own minds.
As a person that has a side business in firewood; 500 KG of dried wood is about a half a cord of pine or spruce wood, here in Colorado, USA. A cord measures out to 4h x4w x8L feet. In meters, 1.22h x1.22w x2.44L For these ancient metallurgy methods, must have required massive efforts in the mining and smelting. The logging side had to have been an enormous effort as well, that probably more than doubled the manpower and oxen requirements needed for this ancient form of industry. It simply blows my mind to envision such efforts.
I'm a hobby prospector with a large interest in mining and the old timers mine sites had a full blown lumberjack division precisely for feeding steam engine boilers. The goldfields around Victoria, Australia where I'm from are all very skinny young eucalypt trees because the ancient forest where all removed for thousands of square kilometres in every direction.
What boggles my mind is that it wasn't easy to just live. Just getting the food and shelter needed to live was an all day job, and then they organized efforts like this which required extraordinary planning to transport and keep the food not only without radio communication or computers, but as near as can be told with little or no written language. Just getting decent drinking water and rid of sewage required significant effort, and all that before digging and hauling earth by hand.
@@vidard9863 I know for myself in our modern era, I can fall and limb about 6-8 cords worth of trees a day with a chainsaw. (Terrain dictates) I would imagine with even a six man crew, they 'may' be able to do perhaps half that much in a day. I'm only able to guess at this. I wonder if they ever found remnants of tools? I would be curious what they actually used as timber-men. That would be a way of doing a living history experiment, unless that has already been done already.
@@vidard9863 its very difficult to imagine how it was. and fun to think about. but food and shelter wasnt an all time job. i dont know where this myth came from.
@GoalOrientedLifting I have lived with stone age, and early iron age people. It was, and still is for them, a full time job. More than that actually. Six twelves, more or less, and you always know which one of your family members you would eat next when, not if, the starving times come back. That's the reality of living in a world where your ancestors didn't travel the world to bring you the best plants and animals and the best resources to make your life easier and safer.
Minor addition: - "Yamnaya" (ямная) is adjective derrivative from the noun "яма" (pit, hole in the ground) - "Srubnaya" (срубная) is adjective derrivative from the noun "сруб" (type of wood construction from interconnecting logs). Prounounsed with starting S (like in "silver"), not SH (like in "shadow")
Another interesting topic is mega structures of the past including some of the mega boats they produced to carry large amounts of weight. Really fascinating how advanced our ancestors were in some ways.
Imagine having to go over 40m underground to mine copper with nothing but candlelight--and nothing to protect you from collapses other than rituals... geez
I did a tour of an old copper mine here in Germany this summer. Even in the 19th century, the process was still pretty much the same. Slow chipping away at the rock, hour after hour deep underground in narrow tunnels. With only a single, small oil lamp per worker (they had to pay for the fuel themselves, so they used as little as possible). Their only advantage was steel tools. But that only made the work faster, not less grueling, I guess. It's not like the copper they harvested was theirs to keep, after all.
@@raraavis7782 the 19th century had blasting too which made the process much easier. Starting with gunpowder and progressing to dynamite in that century.
@@MarkhamShawPyle Lies! Lies! Nothing compares to the legendary immense greatness of tge Ea-nāsir copper. God will punish those who deny it! Oh beware sinners who lie
Oddly enough, I never considered the mining question, when thinking about the 'Bronze age'. I had no idea, that there were actual, tangible remnants of mining operations of that scale from so far back! Fascinating. I live in a region with lots of mining history in Germany, so I otherwise know my way around the topic a bit. The guide of a 18th/19th century copper mine I visited here, mentioned the indicator plant thing as well. It's truly astounding to consider, that 4000 years of civilization later, copper mining was still done in pretty much the same fashion. Aside from steel tools, the process was probably very similar. And similarly gruelling work as well.
Great Orme certainly delivered up an amazing tonnage for it's time. As a matter of great pride to me as a former miner is the tonnage of copper lifted from just one of our Cornish mines. Before it closed in 1820 Dolcoath had delivered up a staggering 350,000 tons of copper...and 80,000 tons of tin. One mine.
Tîm, just a possible interesting linguistic link. My Dad worked in a Gold Mine called Dolau Cothi in Northern Carmarthenshire, West Wales, until the advent of WWII when it ceased operations. The mine is now owned by the National Trust. Dolau is Welsh for Meadows and Cothi is the name of the river that runs through the area. I have no idea if there was ever a link between both mines, but miners of any kind have always been very mobile workers.
Thank you Dan for putting the Great Orme/Y Gogarth mine on the map and to emphasise it's importance. A couple of little snippets that may be of interest. 1.Bones of children have been discovered underground at Y Gogarth who were born on the Iberian Peninsula. Were they slaves who knows. But I guess narrowing seams demand a smaller miner. It certainly confirms the mobility of these metal workers. 2. Another site of huge importance in NW Wales is Paris Mountain near Amlwch on Anglesey. This huge mine was worked in more recent times and very little of its bronze age evidence remains. Both would have produced huge quantities of copper as you point out and the "owners" would certainly have been very wealthy. I also believe that the people who could turn an amorphous lump of blue rock into a glistening copper tool/weapon etc would have been endowed with some mystical and majcal powers within their society. They ofcourse conducted experiments with different alloys of copper with other metals, like lead, zinc, aluminium and ofcourse tin. Today we would call them scientists and metalurgists. You talk about the use of wood/charcoal to obtain the high smelting temperatures, and ofcourse the harder the wood the better. The Oak tree ofcourse was the common source in this country. And yes large swathes of the UK were deforested in the Bronze and Iron ages. And here I draw an interesting linguistic link between this and who I believe occupied these mystical roles in that period. The Welsh word for Oak is Derw. The Welsh name for Druids is Derwyddon. Those who worship or belong to the Oak tree. They're headquarters were on Anglesey and their culture involved no written records, according to Roman historians, possibly in order to protect their secrets. The Romans ofcourse slaughtered every one during their invasion, and in their quest to capture the resources and raw materials. I'm purely surmising but it sort of fits imo..
My family on my dad's side are Cornish, I live in Australia and would so love to go to Cornwall to visit, alas at 74 I've missed my chance financially and physically. Awesome story.
@@TheLRider Dolcoath ( Dor koth in proper Cornish) Koth means Old: Dor means Ground, so 'Old Ground'. The first shaft sunk at Dolcoath was in one of the very Old Meadows reclaimed from gorse , heather and the bracken..In it's day it had the deepest shaft in Cornwall, East Pump Shaft (New Sump) 550 fathoms. We are linguistic cousins. People of the gorse and the heather, the sea and the valleys. You know. Du re sewenal: God bless.
Man I was making a copper mine as a dungeon for my dnd campaign and decided it was way too big and developed and made it a temple instead. Where was this video last year haha. This was fascinating. People often forget how amazing our ancestors were at complex works.
Ancient industry is such an interesting subject. I often wonder what tools and technological solutions we don't know about because they were made of wood, rope, and basketry.
It's really great that we are slowly catching up on those forgotten technologies with the numerous studies, research, and experimental archeology of the last decades despite all those antique materials having left little to no trace. It was becoming a tad insufferable to hear that such marvels as the pyramids wouldnt have been possible "just with human technology". So... aliens and all that nonsense, you know?
@@justalonesoul5825these ancient people, they've mined over a hundred of thousands of tons of copper and some other fancy rocks there for Centuries and maybe even more, digging a bunch of hole tens of meters deep and expand it for many squares of kilometers, and yet what was left is only a bunch of animal bones and very primitives tools such as pickaxe and knives made only from copper..... there is no Lasers, no plastic, no remnants of exotic creature, no radioactive material, literaly nothing special, there is only a statue of their achievement representing what they can do despite the technology of their time. These observation along with other ancient mines that shows overall the same result makes you and me wondering are those aliens even exist isn'it?🤔
The use of meteoric iron (extremely hard alloys) in at least Neolithic China is known, as are a variety of other techniques - sand as an abrasive for both cutting & polishing, and universally, bone.
6:50 I doubt that these are "hand holds" they are much more likely "feet holds", and they used a rope in addition for the hands. You see, wet rock can be slippery, and it's easier to climb up and down if you can rest your feet in small steps with a rope. Otherwise, you would have to lift basically most of your weight with your arms by hanging onto a rope and leaning back by at least 45°. To avoid this strain, they created those holes. And no, you don't climb up and down with just your arms on a vertical shaft. That's not feasible if you worked a whole day in a mine.
Many years ago I researched Mitterberg copper slag analysis. Since then those old mining activities fascinate me. Many thanks Dan! Can we expect a video about tin mining?
That's awesome. Yes it's been on the list for years but it's much more difficult for the archeologists to research ancient tin mining. Tracing chemical signatures much harder, finding prehistoric tin mining sites extremely difficult. Most seem to have been obliterated by later works. But yes I must pull together what I can. After all you can't have a bronze age without tin.
This is wonderful! I knew the Yamnaya had "a" mine, if not several, but had no photos or film footage or even a diagram of what the layout might actually look like. I hope sites like this survive the present war.
And it points up just how valuable copper was that the effort to dig down through the overburden to reach the ore bodies was worth it for the value of the copper ore they recovered.
This war will eventually go nuclear, because escalation is unavoidable as the US slowly loses its proxy war and its prestige.. but the ancient sites probably will survive. Modern sites will not.
Don't know why I hadn't subscribed, yet. Yours is literally a household name in my home, because wifey and I share overlapping interests, here. Thanks for the content.
Thank you for presenting. This made a delightful start to my day, at around 0600 drinking my coffee. There is copper here in Cornwall - but those quantities in "prehistoric" times...! Thanks again for introducing me to this more regional / global picture.
Seeing the thumbnail and maps of that copper mine reminded me of that Fascinating underground city called, Derinkuyu in Turkey. It would be so awesome to learn more about that place. Were they motivated due to horrible weather for a long period of time? Is that what motivated them? Idk.. (I wish it was still a common thing for us to use underground structures nowadays. Even if they were just small ones. It doesn't have to be a mega structure. I like how that opal mining town in Australia, Cooper Petey, utilizes small personal underground structures. That would be awesome)
Re; plants that indicate ores; Agricola's "De Re Metallica" (pub.1556) suggests that the prospector seek out barren spots of land where the plants grow thinly and that many metals will be found in such places. I think this might be especially true for copper many of whose compounds are used as fungicides since many plants relay on symbiotic relations with fungi.
Copper sulfate is very toxic to tree roots but actually beneficial to grapes and berries. Ancient peoples would not necessarily have needed theories why this happened to see these types of patterns.
@@DanDavisHistory Both plants & mushrooms are valuable "Index" indicators of human habitation. Boxwood can't grow in acidic soil - it was imported into French regions where the bedrock is totally acidic granite. Amanita Muscaria - Fly agaric - is often found at pre-Roman sites in France. Hallucinogenic & dangerous, but often considered to be the source of Soma in all Indo-European cultures.
The large amount of charcoal was probably met through coppice or pollard practices rather than clear cutting of forests. Perhaps forest management that accompanied metallurgy would make interesting topic for a future video
They found evidence for coppicing at the Great Orme mine in Wales. The landscape archeology here at Kargaly is a little less certain about what went on and when. The amount of original local tree cover is debated, more work needs to be done. But certainly they don't seem to have done much smelting here. At the contemporary mines in Austria they moved down the mountain sides into the forests for the smelting.
@@DanDavisHistoryI'm guessing that determining the original tree cover of that area is just as difficult as it is in Europe with climate changes since the last ice age, the effects of human habitation, and the loss of large herbivores.
The environmental cost is just as staggering as the amount of copper they produced. The fact that they used up all the local wood for smelting and had to export the ore for further processing shows just how resource-intensive such operations were. 🌳➡🔥
A single pound of copper needed about 12 pounds of charcoal - made from 20-30 pounds of wood - to smelt. A 100,000 tonnes of copper would had needed fuel from clear cutting 20,000-30,000 acres of thick century-old forest to smelt.
A single pound of copper needed about 12 pounds of charcoal - made from 20-30 pounds of wood - to smelt. A 100,000 tonnes of copper would had needed fuel from clear cutting 20,000-30,000 acres of thick century-old forest to smelt.
Love these vids because they expand a person's knowledge and understanding by so much. This overall region (including going out a little farther in all directions) was so important to civilization.
It's wild to think that the pontic steppe may have been less steppe-y and more forested if ancient bronze age people never needed to smelt anything there. That would have implications on human history for sure.
Were any lighting devices found? Lighting as early as the Paleolithic in at least France was sophisticated - I own a fabulously detailed sculpted & engraved limestone lamp from La Dordogne, about 25,000 years old. Lamp oil /fat reservoirs in Paleolithic sites are more often crudely sculpted from the walls, & might go unrecognized.
Fascinating, i grew up in a area in North America that had copper mining dating back to 5000 bc. The copper is native and did not need to be smelted, just worked by hammer into the shape aka tool desired.
Glad to have guessed it was most certainly a Minecraft ref before expanding the comments lol. I'm not too out of touch with all of that despite never trying Minecraft myself!
In schools they barelly scratch the surface of the Bronze Age and tell us those people in Europe were primitive, but, clearly, that couldn't be further from the truth!
I rhink it's the cultures from the Andes region of South America that developed the furthest without writing, like the Moche, Inca, and Muisca, if that's a topic you're interested in.
@@perfectallycromulent To expand, Incas still had means to convey "recorded" messages (with ropes and knots) based on the numeral system they had developped. No alphabet indeed though.
They definitely has some form of numeracy. Can't do anything on this scale without it. And likely had some form of symbolic notation, for the supply goods necessary, trade, tribute, etc.
Been in an old mine in Mexico with the same situation. Nowadays they sometimes fill with cemented fill to support the ground while they take out the remaining ore to get 100% extraction.
You should do a video on the Michigan Keweenaw Peninsula Copper mines and the missing 500,000+ tons of copper that were mined before 1200 AD. If memory serves me there was a Phoenician ship that sunk with copper and when it was tested they found it could've only come from those copper mines. Of course that was thrown out because it didn't fit the narrative.
The sophistication and magnitude of manpower necessary to mine the copper ore at Kargaly, refine it, and transport it thousands of miles was an impressive feat of human ingenuity, even by today's standards.
"By today's standards", the biggest copper mine in the world by output, Escondida mine in Chile, produces 800.000 tons in a year, so extracts more than Kalgary in its whole existence, many centuries, in just a bit more than... 2 months. Not to take anything away from the prowess of our ancestors, but to say it's impressive by today's standards is probably quite an exageration.
I find the word sherds really annoying. It still needs to be followed by "of pottery" because it sounds too much like shards, even though sherds inherently means pottery. Just me? 😅
Have you ever looked into pre-historic gold mining in South Africa? I’ve heard that carbon dating at some ancient mine sites date back up to 60,000 years.
So refreshing to watch a clear, fact-based program on ancient history rather than the wooey-wooey, sensationalist, fictions of so many producers. Thank you.
Oh yeah Mitterberg :)) Here in Austria you stumble over prehistoric mines all the time. Not only copper but also gold, iron and silver. Some of them are just more or less tiny holes and some are hughe. Its crazy how to us this is normal and we don't think much about it.
A quick Google says there's something to this statement, the mass of copper extracted is disputed however. I wasn't aware of any prehistoric copper mining in the USA.
9000 years ago nomadic people in Michigan used the exposed copper to make tools (gorto site, Marquette County) speculating only opportunistically but didn't appear to set up production mining of the world's largest native copper deposit.
The miners shipped their raw ore elsewhere to be melted down, but I speculate the people they shipped it to also sold the ingots they made with it. Because as the old adage goes, they who smelt it, must have dealt it.
"Because as the old adage goes, they who smelt it, must have dealt it." I exhaled sharply through my nose. Here's another (so far oldest) comprehensive joke: What hasn't happened in time immemorial? A wife farting while sitting in her husbands lap.
Being a mining foreman for those short 700 years some of these cultures operated in must have been an amazing experiance for the time. Considering the numbers of cows sacrificed and the number of idols and artifacts it must have been rough work with great rewards.
It's amazing to think that the Minoans were getting some of their copper from the Urals rather than Cyprus. Obviously it came through other traders first, but the fact that it came from there rather than a much closer island is thought provoking. Maybe it held higher value because it came from a distant almost mythical land. Maybe they thought it just looked better or was better quality than the ones from Cyprus - who knows?
Its fascinating to contemplate the logistics involved. Were beasts of burden used to transport the ore? Once the trees were cleared, did that make it easier to graze cattle? How did cattle as a resource contribute? Using cattle to feed humans was certainly a major factor, but was tallow also used for lamps in the mines?
I love the reddish coppery color of copper. I particularly enjoy pale, pink color of super pure copper. I dig it a lot. I stare at it while grinning insanely.
So interesting. I've been to Great Orme but had never heard about Kargaly. I also visited Grime's Graves, a flint mine, in the summer. It is worth a visit if you're in the area as they have a shaft you descend.
Grimes Graves has a lot in common with the techniques employed at Kargaly, as I'm sure you recognised. The vertical shafts and the moon like surface left behind. I live close by Grimes Graves.
@@DanDavisHistory Yes, if you had shown me a picture of Kargaly prior to watching your video, I would have assumed it was Grime's Graves. It's a lovely part of the country.
They might have ran out of trees to work with... like what Saruman did at Isengard, which may have led to working other mines. Interesting video, well made and understandable.
Download and play Tacticus for Free today: play.tacticusgame.com/DanDavisHistory USE CODE: NOVHELLO to get 2000 gold and 50 Blackstones for FREE!
Thank you very much for watching my video.
I honeslty like Tacticus lol. It's a fun little game to play on mobile.
Yeah I keep telling myself I'm not gonna play for long but I find it hard to stop. The rounds are just the right length so you wanna start another one.
Nice work¡¡¡Congrats¡¡
@@DanDavisHistory
I do believe I'll give it a go.
Thanks
@@DanDavisHistory Was a good video, I always love Ancient History, since I was a Child. Before the Internet I went to every library Where ever I was and Went to the History sections to find the oldest books I could. I lived in St. Louis for almost 5 years. They have a great Library, I didnt get to see the New York city Library when I was there in 1992, but I did use their call in request line for certain information about Black Voters before the Civil war. They were so nice and helpful, The first Recorded Black Vote(they didnt track the race of voters in 1831) but in Chicago 1832 they recorded Black votes in a Ombudsmen race. It was a nice referance to my essay about Political evolution in the USA and proof that not All Black American Ancestors were Slaves.
These sort of massive scale projects always serve to remind me of how clever ancient humans were. It helps demystify the people of the day, and emphasize how unchanged we are on a fundamental level.
I’ve never worked in an ancient copper mine.
Indeed, some of them were actually smarter than today's average people.
Why would you need to demysify them? They're the same humans as we are today. Knowledge will grow and fade but human ingenuity and intelligence is only limited by our own minds.
@maybe they were smarter than YOU, but you can’t compare them to the rest of us.
Who was mystifying them?
As a person that has a side business in firewood; 500 KG of dried wood is about a half a cord of pine or spruce wood, here in Colorado, USA.
A cord measures out to 4h x4w x8L feet. In meters, 1.22h x1.22w x2.44L
For these ancient metallurgy methods, must have required massive efforts in the mining and smelting. The logging side had to have been an enormous effort as well, that probably more than doubled the manpower and oxen requirements needed for this ancient form of industry.
It simply blows my mind to envision such efforts.
I'm a hobby prospector with a large interest in mining and the old timers mine sites had a full blown lumberjack division precisely for feeding steam engine boilers.
The goldfields around Victoria, Australia where I'm from are all very skinny young eucalypt trees because the ancient forest where all removed for thousands of square kilometres in every direction.
What boggles my mind is that it wasn't easy to just live. Just getting the food and shelter needed to live was an all day job, and then they organized efforts like this which required extraordinary planning to transport and keep the food not only without radio communication or computers, but as near as can be told with little or no written language. Just getting decent drinking water and rid of sewage required significant effort, and all that before digging and hauling earth by hand.
@@vidard9863 I know for myself in our modern era, I can fall and limb about 6-8 cords worth of trees a day with a chainsaw.
(Terrain dictates)
I would imagine with even a six man crew, they 'may' be able to do perhaps half that much in a day. I'm only able to guess at this.
I wonder if they ever found remnants of tools? I would be curious what they actually used as timber-men.
That would be a way of doing a living history experiment, unless that has already been done already.
@@vidard9863 its very difficult to imagine how it was. and fun to think about. but food and shelter wasnt an all time job. i dont know where this myth came from.
@GoalOrientedLifting I have lived with stone age, and early iron age people. It was, and still is for them, a full time job. More than that actually. Six twelves, more or less, and you always know which one of your family members you would eat next when, not if, the starving times come back. That's the reality of living in a world where your ancestors didn't travel the world to bring you the best plants and animals and the best resources to make your life easier and safer.
Minor addition:
- "Yamnaya" (ямная) is adjective derrivative from the noun "яма" (pit, hole in the ground)
- "Srubnaya" (срубная) is adjective derrivative from the noun "сруб" (type of wood construction from interconnecting logs). Prounounsed with starting S (like in "silver"), not SH (like in "shadow")
This is cool, thank you!
I never heard of this before.
In fact, many times I learned on this channel about subjects I have never heard about.
Which is great!
Another interesting topic is mega structures of the past including some of the mega boats they produced to carry large amounts of weight. Really fascinating how advanced our ancestors were in some ways.
Agreed. 😊
You might enjoy Ancient Apocalypse then.
Imagine having to go over 40m underground to mine copper with nothing but candlelight--and nothing to protect you from collapses other than rituals... geez
Well we have headlamps now. But in West Virginia, the rituals are still all that is holding up the mine shafts…
I did a tour of an old copper mine here in Germany this summer. Even in the 19th century, the process was still pretty much the same. Slow chipping away at the rock, hour after hour deep underground in narrow tunnels. With only a single, small oil lamp per worker (they had to pay for the fuel themselves, so they used as little as possible).
Their only advantage was steel tools. But that only made the work faster, not less grueling, I guess. It's not like the copper they harvested was theirs to keep, after all.
Still happens every day somewhere in the world.
Vertical shafts could mean mirrors of different materials to reflect light down into the tunnels.
@@raraavis7782 the 19th century had blasting too which made the process much easier. Starting with gunpowder and progressing to dynamite in that century.
No matter where it is mined everybody knows that Ea-nāṣir sells the highest grade of copper.
Nanni gave one star...
@@MarkhamShawPyle Lies! Lies! Nothing compares to the legendary immense greatness of tge Ea-nāsir copper. God will punish those who deny it! Oh beware sinners who lie
@@alexsky104 Arbituram has entered the chat.
Ea-Nasir is a scammer and we all know it
I've been trying to reach you about your copper's extended warranty
Oddly enough, I never considered the mining question, when thinking about the 'Bronze age'. I had no idea, that there were actual, tangible remnants of mining operations of that scale from so far back! Fascinating. I live in a region with lots of mining history in Germany, so I otherwise know my way around the topic a bit.
The guide of a 18th/19th century copper mine I visited here, mentioned the indicator plant thing as well.
It's truly astounding to consider, that 4000 years of civilization later, copper mining was still done in pretty much the same fashion.
Aside from steel tools, the process was probably very similar. And similarly gruelling work as well.
There are large flint mines
There are large flint mines
There are large flint mines
I recently visited a small roman copper mine near Trier... Was rather systematic. Their shafts into the sandstone were perfectly round and straight.
Hell yeah! New Dan Davis just dropped
DANG! 😂 you beat ne to the comment!
Dan has the best videos. His video on the Sumerians is the best one I’ve ever seen on the subject.
Glad I am not the only one feeling this way!
ok, - what happened to the old ?
😐
Great Orme certainly delivered up an amazing tonnage for it's time. As a matter of great pride to me as a former miner is the tonnage of copper lifted from just one of our Cornish mines. Before it closed in 1820 Dolcoath had delivered up a staggering 350,000 tons of copper...and 80,000 tons of tin. One mine.
Hence the Cornish pasty...
Tîm, just a possible interesting linguistic link. My Dad worked in a Gold Mine called Dolau Cothi in Northern Carmarthenshire, West Wales, until the advent of WWII when it ceased operations. The mine is now owned by the National Trust.
Dolau is Welsh for Meadows and Cothi is the name of the river that runs through the area. I have no idea if there was ever a link between both mines, but miners of any kind have always been very mobile workers.
Thank you Dan for putting the Great Orme/Y Gogarth mine on the map and to emphasise it's importance.
A couple of little snippets that may be of interest.
1.Bones of children have been discovered underground at Y Gogarth who were born on the Iberian Peninsula. Were they slaves who knows. But I guess narrowing seams demand a smaller miner. It certainly confirms the mobility of these metal workers.
2. Another site of huge importance in NW Wales is Paris Mountain near Amlwch on Anglesey. This huge mine was worked in more recent times and very little of its bronze age evidence remains.
Both would have produced huge quantities of copper as you point out and the "owners" would certainly have been very wealthy.
I also believe that the people who could turn an amorphous lump of blue rock into a glistening copper tool/weapon etc would have been endowed with some mystical and majcal powers within their society.
They ofcourse conducted experiments with different alloys of copper with other metals, like lead, zinc, aluminium and ofcourse tin. Today we would call them scientists and metalurgists.
You talk about the use of wood/charcoal to obtain the high smelting temperatures, and ofcourse the harder the wood the better. The Oak tree ofcourse was the common source in this country. And yes large swathes of the UK were deforested in the Bronze and Iron ages.
And here I draw an interesting linguistic link between this and who I believe occupied these mystical roles in that period. The Welsh word for Oak is Derw. The Welsh name for Druids is Derwyddon. Those who worship or belong to the Oak tree.
They're headquarters were on Anglesey and their culture involved no written records, according to Roman historians, possibly in order to protect their secrets.
The Romans ofcourse slaughtered every one during their invasion, and in their quest to capture the resources and raw materials.
I'm purely surmising but it sort of fits imo..
My family on my dad's side are Cornish, I live in Australia and would so love to go to Cornwall to visit, alas at 74 I've missed my chance financially and physically. Awesome story.
@@TheLRider Dolcoath ( Dor koth in proper Cornish) Koth means Old: Dor means Ground, so 'Old Ground'. The first shaft sunk at Dolcoath was in one of the very Old Meadows reclaimed from gorse , heather and the bracken..In it's day it had the deepest shaft in Cornwall, East Pump Shaft (New Sump) 550 fathoms. We are linguistic cousins. People of the gorse and the heather, the sea and the valleys. You know. Du re sewenal: God bless.
SOURCES LISTED YAY! idk why so many seemingly still great historians don’t cite their sources on their videos thank you so much!
Man I was making a copper mine as a dungeon for my dnd campaign and decided it was way too big and developed and made it a temple instead. Where was this video last year haha. This was fascinating. People often forget how amazing our ancestors were at complex works.
Ancient industry is such an interesting subject.
I often wonder what tools and technological solutions we don't know about because they were made of wood, rope, and basketry.
It's really great that we are slowly catching up on those forgotten technologies with the numerous studies, research, and experimental archeology of the last decades despite all those antique materials having left little to no trace. It was becoming a tad insufferable to hear that such marvels as the pyramids wouldnt have been possible "just with human technology". So... aliens and all that nonsense, you know?
@@justalonesoul5825these ancient people, they've mined over a hundred of thousands of tons of copper and some other fancy rocks there for Centuries and maybe even more, digging a bunch of hole tens of meters deep and expand it for many squares of kilometers, and yet what was left is only a bunch of animal bones and very primitives tools such as pickaxe and knives made only from copper..... there is no Lasers, no plastic, no remnants of exotic creature, no radioactive material, literaly nothing special, there is only a statue of their achievement representing what they can do despite the technology of their time.
These observation along with other ancient mines that shows overall the same result makes you and me wondering are those aliens even exist isn'it?🤔
The use of meteoric iron (extremely hard alloys) in at least Neolithic China is known, as are a variety of other techniques - sand as an abrasive for both cutting & polishing, and universally, bone.
Even if they had cellphones, they'd be dust now too. Ofc they didn't, but if...
6:50 I doubt that these are "hand holds" they are much more likely "feet holds", and they used a rope in addition for the hands. You see, wet rock can be slippery, and it's easier to climb up and down if you can rest your feet in small steps with a rope. Otherwise, you would have to lift basically most of your weight with your arms by hanging onto a rope and leaning back by at least 45°. To avoid this strain, they created those holes. And no, you don't climb up and down with just your arms on a vertical shaft. That's not feasible if you worked a whole day in a mine.
Perfect time for a break, pause everything and watch Dan ❤
Fabulous! You're a star, I love your work.
Hi Dan, backfilling passages has a practical utility: it takes less effort than carrying the material to the surface.
Very good point. An abandoned passage is simply a resource.
one of my family's favorite activities is backfilling our mom's passages.
And it helps keep the roof from falling
Blocking the emergence of nightmarish creatures from the depths below is pretty utilitarian itself.
Many years ago I researched Mitterberg copper slag analysis. Since then those old mining activities fascinate me. Many thanks Dan! Can we expect a video about tin mining?
That's awesome. Yes it's been on the list for years but it's much more difficult for the archeologists to research ancient tin mining. Tracing chemical signatures much harder, finding prehistoric tin mining sites extremely difficult. Most seem to have been obliterated by later works. But yes I must pull together what I can. After all you can't have a bronze age without tin.
@@DanDavisHistory Those mines are thousands of years old. Methinks they won't be sad if they have to wait some more years.
@@DanDavisHistoryit will be nice also to see material about neolithic Flint Mines, they are fascinating too!
Very intriguing look at the Bronze Age copper trade and mining. Clearly there was massive commerce in copper and bronze in the ancient world.
Matchless work. I am watching the "view" counter tick over like a Rolls Royce. It was 9800 when I started and 10400 when I finished.
This is wonderful! I knew the Yamnaya had "a" mine, if not several, but had no photos or film footage or even a diagram of what the layout might actually look like. I hope sites like this survive the present war.
And it points up just how valuable copper was that the effort to dig down through the overburden to reach the ore bodies was worth it for the value of the copper ore they recovered.
This war will eventually go nuclear, because escalation is unavoidable as the US slowly loses its proxy war and its prestige.. but the ancient sites probably will survive. Modern sites will not.
It's a special military operation! Also it's thousands of kilometres away! God bless Russia and Putin!
Don't know why I hadn't subscribed, yet. Yours is literally a household name in my home, because wifey and I share overlapping interests, here. Thanks for the content.
Thank you for presenting. This made a delightful start to my day, at around 0600 drinking my coffee. There is copper here in Cornwall - but those quantities in "prehistoric" times...! Thanks again for introducing me to this more regional / global picture.
Seeing the thumbnail and maps of that copper mine reminded me of that Fascinating underground city called, Derinkuyu in Turkey. It would be so awesome to learn more about that place. Were they motivated due to horrible weather for a long period of time? Is that what motivated them? Idk.. (I wish it was still a common thing for us to use underground structures nowadays. Even if they were just small ones. It doesn't have to be a mega structure. I like how that opal mining town in Australia, Cooper Petey, utilizes small personal underground structures. That would be awesome)
Those subterranean homes are freaking awesome!
Re; plants that indicate ores; Agricola's "De Re Metallica" (pub.1556) suggests that the prospector seek out barren spots of land where the plants grow thinly and that many metals will be found in such places. I think this might be especially true for copper many of whose compounds are used as fungicides since many plants relay on symbiotic relations with fungi.
Wonderful, I didn't know that, thank you.
Copper sulfate is very toxic to tree roots but actually beneficial to grapes and berries. Ancient peoples would not necessarily have needed theories why this happened to see these types of patterns.
@@DanDavisHistory Both plants & mushrooms are valuable "Index" indicators of human habitation. Boxwood can't grow in acidic soil - it was imported into French regions where the bedrock is totally acidic granite. Amanita Muscaria - Fly agaric - is often found at pre-Roman sites in France. Hallucinogenic & dangerous, but often considered to be the source of Soma in all Indo-European cultures.
The large amount of charcoal was probably met through coppice or pollard practices rather than clear cutting of forests.
Perhaps forest management that accompanied metallurgy would make interesting topic for a future video
They found evidence for coppicing at the Great Orme mine in Wales. The landscape archeology here at Kargaly is a little less certain about what went on and when. The amount of original local tree cover is debated, more work needs to be done. But certainly they don't seem to have done much smelting here.
At the contemporary mines in Austria they moved down the mountain sides into the forests for the smelting.
@@DanDavisHistory thx!
@@DanDavisHistory Strange that they were such professionals in mining metals and precious stones back then, but never had the idea of mining coal?
People did do some coal mining in prehistory but there wasn't much demand for it when you could make charcoal and trees were everywhere.
@@DanDavisHistoryI'm guessing that determining the original tree cover of that area is just as difficult as it is in Europe with climate changes since the last ice age, the effects of human habitation, and the loss of large herbivores.
The environmental cost is just as staggering as the amount of copper they produced. The fact that they used up all the local wood for smelting and had to export the ore for further processing shows just how resource-intensive such operations were. 🌳➡🔥
A single pound of copper needed about 12 pounds of charcoal - made from 20-30 pounds of wood - to smelt.
A 100,000 tonnes of copper would had needed fuel from clear cutting 20,000-30,000 acres of thick century-old forest to smelt.
A single pound of copper needed about 12 pounds of charcoal - made from 20-30 pounds of wood - to smelt.
A 100,000 tonnes of copper would had needed fuel from clear cutting 20,000-30,000 acres of thick century-old forest to smelt.
Humanity has never understood even the basics of sustainability and this will be the end of our species.
What's surprising to me is that nobody thought to plant new trees so that they could keep the mines going.
I suspect they used cow dung for fuel. It would explain the large herds.
Love these vids because they expand a person's knowledge and understanding by so much. This overall region (including going out a little farther in all directions) was so important to civilization.
There were also copper mines in the americas around the Great Lakes.
750,000 tons from Isle Royal alone and another 150,000 tons from other mines in Mn Wi and Michigan.
It's wild to think that the pontic steppe may have been less steppe-y and more forested if ancient bronze age people never needed to smelt anything there. That would have implications on human history for sure.
Woo! Perfect timing.. another awesome history video!!
Thank you Dan!!
You’re awesome!
The ingenuity of prehistoric ppls is fascinating! Thanks, Dan!
Were any lighting devices found? Lighting as early as the Paleolithic in at least France was sophisticated - I own a fabulously detailed sculpted & engraved limestone lamp from La Dordogne, about 25,000 years old. Lamp oil /fat reservoirs in Paleolithic sites are more often crudely sculpted from the walls, & might go unrecognized.
Fascinating, i grew up in a area in North America that had copper mining dating back to 5000 bc. The copper is native and did not need to be smelted, just worked by hammer into the shape aka tool desired.
Quite primitive, unsmelted copper is impure and not too useful
Gotta be Michigan!
@@nx3696 yes, it has a lot of silver in it. I have samples that are called half bred you can see
@@nx3696 actually not to impute but it has lots of silver. I have samples that are called half breeds. You can see the native silver and native copper
@@osirisandilio yes it is
Remember, copper can spawn in many underground locations, but it tends to generate in its highest concentration in the elevation levels Y=47-48.
Why is that? Curious noob asking.
@@CJScott-po3ncmust be Dwarf Fortress. (What Minecraft is based on)
Glad to have guessed it was most certainly a Minecraft ref before expanding the comments lol. I'm not too out of touch with all of that despite never trying Minecraft myself!
When you want something of quality, something interesting and understandable as well as enjoyable, Dan never fails to deliver. Thanks again Dan.
To put it in perspective, in 2022, 22 MILLION tons of copper were mined. Interesting video.
Very interesting subject, still so much more to discover. Dan never disappoints.
In schools they barelly scratch the surface of the Bronze Age and tell us those people in Europe were primitive, but, clearly, that couldn't be further from the truth!
Love the videos about bronze age commerce, can't get enough.
It’s crazy how these people were able to develop so much without writing
I rhink it's the cultures from the Andes region of South America that developed the furthest without writing, like the Moche, Inca, and Muisca, if that's a topic you're interested in.
@@perfectallycromulent To expand, Incas still had means to convey "recorded" messages (with ropes and knots) based on the numeral system they had developped. No alphabet indeed though.
They definitely has some form of numeracy. Can't do anything on this scale without it. And likely had some form of symbolic notation, for the supply goods necessary, trade, tribute, etc.
I love videos like these. This knowledge is nothing but illuminating to our awesome ancient past!! Excellent video.
As a miner, you back fill working to avoid having to haul the waste rock all the way to surface. It can also be useful for ground support.
They were filled from the spoil excavated to the top
Been in an old mine in Mexico with the same situation. Nowadays they sometimes fill with cemented fill to support the ground while they take out the remaining ore to get 100% extraction.
Dan hitting us with a bunch of videos!
You should do a video on the Michigan Keweenaw Peninsula Copper mines and the missing 500,000+ tons of copper that were mined before 1200 AD. If memory serves me there was a Phoenician ship that sunk with copper and when it was tested they found it could've only come from those copper mines. Of course that was thrown out because it didn't fit the narrative.
That's just made up. Look up the Old Copper Culture
The sophistication and magnitude of manpower necessary to mine the copper ore at Kargaly, refine it, and transport it thousands of miles was an impressive feat of human ingenuity, even by today's standards.
"By today's standards", the biggest copper mine in the world by output, Escondida mine in Chile, produces 800.000 tons in a year, so extracts more than Kalgary in its whole existence, many centuries, in just a bit more than... 2 months. Not to take anything away from the prowess of our ancestors, but to say it's impressive by today's standards is probably quite an exageration.
As always, wonderfully informative and entertaining video. Thanks, Dan
Do the mysterious Lake Superior Prehistoric Copper Mine's next....
Great show. Always look forward to your new offerings!
I find the word sherds really annoying. It still needs to be followed by "of pottery" because it sounds too much like shards, even though sherds inherently means pottery. Just me? 😅
I had no clue such word existed. I just assumed its shards.
Its the same word just with alternative spelling. You will also see potsherd.
Dont you just love English? It is related to Germanic/Norse words.
Sherds sherds sherds
@@DanDavisHistoryyer a sherd herder.
Using sherds or shards is Ok. But sherds is how archaeologists say it.
I love being early to these. Tell me more Dan!
I can only imagine the amount of trouble the balrogs would have caused in those mines.
keep it up this is great pace... great video...
Have you ever looked into pre-historic gold mining in South Africa? I’ve heard that carbon dating at some ancient mine sites date back up to 60,000 years.
What an awesome example of a fascinating niche of history that has been overlooked by general knowledge! Thank you for this video!
The significant other I don’t have, the stranger that produces all those neat videos I like to watch dropped.
Amazing human history of metal production.
Your videos are incredibly well-made! . Keep up the amazing work!
So refreshing to watch a clear, fact-based program on ancient history rather than the wooey-wooey, sensationalist, fictions of so many producers. Thank you.
Oh yeah Mitterberg :))
Here in Austria you stumble over prehistoric mines all the time. Not only copper but also gold, iron and silver.
Some of them are just more or less tiny holes and some are hughe.
Its crazy how to us this is normal and we don't think much about it.
Woohoo!! Nothing makes a day like a Dan History day! woot woot new video!
Was just watching an old video and up pops a new one! ❤😊❤
Excellent presentation! As bronze is an alloy of copper and usually tin, perhaps you could explore ancient tin mining and trade
Bless you, Dan.
There were mines in Upper Michigan over 6k yrs ago that produced an estimated 500 thousand tons of copper.
No they didn't
A quick Google says there's something to this statement, the mass of copper extracted is disputed however. I wasn't aware of any prehistoric copper mining in the USA.
9000 years ago nomadic people in Michigan used the exposed copper to make tools (gorto site, Marquette County) speculating only opportunistically but didn't appear to set up production mining of the world's largest native copper deposit.
The miners shipped their raw ore elsewhere to be melted down, but I speculate the people they shipped it to also sold the ingots they made with it. Because as the old adage goes, they who smelt it, must have dealt it.
"Because as the old adage goes, they who smelt it, must have dealt it."
I exhaled sharply through my nose.
Here's another (so far oldest) comprehensive joke: What hasn't happened in time immemorial? A wife farting while sitting in her husbands lap.
So cool!! I was wondering about this while watching your last video.
Works astonishingly well as a Vintage Story tutorial :)
Thanks, Dan.
Wonderful work! Such great summaries of existing work and fun speculations!
Wonderful information, thanks! Never heard before about this mining field.
What a fascinating video thank you Dan Davis
Being a mining foreman for those short 700 years some of these cultures operated in must have been an amazing experiance for the time. Considering the numbers of cows sacrificed and the number of idols and artifacts it must have been rough work with great rewards.
Fascinating. Many thanks.
It's amazing to think that the Minoans were getting some of their copper from the Urals rather than Cyprus. Obviously it came through other traders first, but the fact that it came from there rather than a much closer island is thought provoking. Maybe it held higher value because it came from a distant almost mythical land. Maybe they thought it just looked better or was better quality than the ones from Cyprus - who knows?
Maybe cyprus hadn't ramped up production yet. They only took over after 1400 BC.
Maybe your clan has been trading with another clan for many generations and that's just who you continue to work with?
Love this channel
Great video as always!
What a great video! I learned so much. Thank you.
Brilliant as always! thank you!
Thanks Dan! My must read list grows with every video you release!
Thanks for watching Jimmy. Yes there's always so much to read. I'm reading about ancient pottery right now.
Very interesting
Thanks for a remarkable and fascinating video! ⛏🔥⚒
I’ve been into this mine. The tunnels go on forever. It’s so eerily quiet there.
Thank you for another great knowledge drop!
Do tin mines next!
Kar means work
Galy means narrow place.
Great, thank you.
(Commenting also to aware others...)
Tip. Check Falu koppargruva in Sweden. Was active from around 1300 to 1990. Today a museum, where you can go tours in some of its mine network.
10:28 that indirect was indeed very necessary
*Hello Dan*
Just discovered your channel.
Your coverage of it was well presented.
It has added to my knowledge regarding Copper Mining.
Its fascinating to contemplate the logistics involved. Were beasts of burden used to transport the ore? Once the trees were cleared, did that make it easier to graze cattle? How did cattle as a resource contribute? Using cattle to feed humans was certainly a major factor, but was tallow also used for lamps in the mines?
I love the reddish coppery color of copper. I particularly enjoy pale, pink color of super pure copper. I dig it a lot. I stare at it while grinning insanely.
Thanks for the book links
So interesting. I've been to Great Orme but had never heard about Kargaly. I also visited Grime's Graves, a flint mine, in the summer. It is worth a visit if you're in the area as they have a shaft you descend.
Grimes Graves has a lot in common with the techniques employed at Kargaly, as I'm sure you recognised. The vertical shafts and the moon like surface left behind. I live close by Grimes Graves.
@@DanDavisHistory Yes, if you had shown me a picture of Kargaly prior to watching your video, I would have assumed it was Grime's Graves. It's a lovely part of the country.
Barnack Hills and Holes is a similar site. My favourite ancient mine is Puzzle Woods. The landscape inspired Tolkien.
¡Just a wonderful video! Thank you so much
They might have ran out of trees to work with... like what Saruman did at Isengard, which may have led to working other mines. Interesting video, well made and understandable.
Damn, the Minoans had contact with the Urals and South Asia and we know this from iron and monkeys. That's quite the radius.
That old trade in monkeys Watson as I relight my pipe & gaze back into the fire
Great show Dan!
Always a great notification to get on my phone, thank you for your great work!
Staggering, just staggering!
Structure of the mines here remind me of Grimes Graves flint mines in Norfolk, UK