The History of Mining. Michael Coulson
derived from old workings, basic smelting sites and metal objects, and carbon dating techniques used to assess the age of the evidence.
Of particular interest is the identity of the Africans who were involved in this ancient mining. The curiosity comes from a colonial belief that sophisticated commercial activity would have been beyond the abilities of indigenous Africans so there must have been migration from the north, the Arab world in particular, perhaps in the form of technical advice from Arab traders or perhaps in the form of a long disappeared civilisation.
This line of speculation is similar to that relating to ancient mining activity in North America where, as we have already noted, Indian lore does not seem to include information on historic mining in the Lake Michigan area where ancient workings were found. The conclusion, however, must be that at some time technically advanced African tribes occupied areas of southern Africa and mined copper – it is important to remember that Africa has experienced significant tribal movement throughout history (although critics of the continent’s colonial period sometimes seem to suggest that the Europeans’ arrival disturbed political structures that had existed unchanged for millennia).
Other ancient southern African mining sites have been found in Botswana and Zimbabwe, where copper artefacts including jewellery and beads as well as iron tools have been carbon dated, with some estimated to be from the end of the 1st millennium AD. There is, too, evidence of ancient mining in the techniques for treating low grade iron ores, observed around the turn of the 19th century in West Africa, today a key destination for customers like the Chinese searching for long-term iron ore supplies. The Hausas of Northern Nigeria used galena as a cosmetic powder, which simplified the search for minerals in the region in the colonial period. The development of this traditional adornment is thought to go back many centuries.
There is also evidence of gold mining in the West African region as early as the 5th century, and mining carried out by indigenous miners using techniques not dissimilar from those used elsewhere including fire setting to crack gold bearing ore. The mines themselves were largely relatively shallow pits, alluvial operations and also small-scale underground operations, perhaps going down 30 feet.
14. The Structure of Ownership and Operation
Today the mining industry’s operating and ownership structure is largely settled. There are some government-owned mines but mining worldwide is dominated by private ownership where capital is provided by shareholders and banks, and a board of directors sits on top of an administrative and operating structure.
National and regional governments set tax and royalty rates and also provide a legal base for the industry’s operations through legislation. Governments may also make state land available for mining development. This more formal structure had been evolving since the Middle Ages as we will see later on. In the ancient world the situation was far less straightforward and thus less stable, although as we have shown the Roman Empire did have an organised structure for its mining industry.
In the ancient world there were two forms of mine operation – one related to the larger-scale mines which required the labour of slaves and where ownership was either in the hands of the Crown or aristocratic landowners. Where the mining operation was small scale the miners would usually pay a lease rent to the owner for mining the land, although it was not impossible for small miners to mine outcrops without recourse to ownership issues.
For areas like the mining of gold and silver, with their monetary aspects, the state often claimed all rights to any metal mined, and although rights to mine were given to miners the output would often have to be sold to the state at a price determined by the state. On the other hand, in Britain in the Middle Ages there are records of extensive purchases of lead in the commercial market by the Crown for the building of royal residences, indicating that the Crown, certainly in England, did not want to be involved in the mining process and was happy to fulfil its industrial metal requirements in the open market.
The profitability or otherwise of mines in the ancient world would have been affected by broadly the same issues as rule today – the cost of the inputs against the value of the metals extracted. Whilst some ancient mines operated for hundreds of years, there is evidence that on many occasions production was interrupted, often for years, indicating fluctuating financial returns.
The use of slaves in large mining operations would have obviously reduced operating costs considerably. For instance, the quarrying of stone to build the pyramids in Egypt would have been very labour intensive, as would the construction of the pyramids themselves, so a slave labour force would have boosted the economics of the venture considerably. The relative shallowness of most mines should have been helpful also and it is likely that the development of deeper mines was constrained by issues of engineering, water tables and geological factors, in addition to development costs.
As far as the economic importance of mining in the ancient world is concerned, strong data is difficult to find but it is possible to make some intelligent guesses. Agriculture and forestry were almost certainly the primary activities of most ancient economies, with manufacturing being confined to the essentials of life, including weapons and household items. Mining would have provided the raw materials for this manufacturing and also stone for building, but it is in the area of precious metals that its main impact would have been felt. Here the state had an overwhelming interest in obtaining gold and silver so that, in particular, wars of conquest could be financed.
The economic effect of acquiring large quantities of gold and silver is something we will come to later when we look at the Spanish conquest of parts of South America in the later Middle Ages. Suffice it to say at this stage that the huge inflation that accompanied the arrival of South American gold in Spain suggests that mining would have been a substantial industry in terms of its position within the economy. In the ancient world we could draw similar conclusions about the position of metals and minerals, including precious metals, in the economy of the expanding Roman Empire.
15. Conclusion
In the 21st century things move very fast; technological advances can be rendered obsolete even before they have achieved widespread use and science seems to have replaced religion as the fountain of truth. In other words our world is completely different from the one that our ancient ancestors lived in.
It is therefore not surprising how slowly things changed all those millennia ago and that the world of mining mirrored that slow pace of change. A number of mining techniques persisted for centuries, passing from Stone to Bronze to Iron Age. The practice of fire setting remained a widely used method of breaking mineralised rock, particularly underground, across these periods. Stone hammers, which were used to break and crush smaller pieces of rock, survived the Stone Age, and treatment of crushed ores was consistently done in open, and later enclosed, furnaces and in some cases crucibles, the fuel to fire these furnaces being charcoal. Some of the treatment techniques even survived into the modern era – hydraulic mining known to the Romans was rediscovered in the 19th century AD and the use of stored water to wash ore was another early development that survives even today.
Mining methods also continued basically unchanged throughout the ancient period. Pits were scoured out and shafts were painstakingly dug using basic tools of stone and then iron. Underground tunnels were driven, galleries dug out and wooden open drains to control water inflows were laid down.
The products that metals were used to make also hardly changed in seven millennia. Basically man needed weapons, protective metal products such as armour a little later, cooking and kitchen utensils (although clay/ceramic items were also used), tools, jewellery and, in the case of gold and silver, money.
As an example of this slow pace of development, we can look at the working of wood which, along with stone, was the most important construction material from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages. For 4000 years until the Bronze Age wood was cut using jagged flint tools; in the next 2000 or so years a hand-sawing blade made of metal emerged. With the coming of iron, saws began to cut stone as well as wood. As the age of the Industrial Revolution dawned the technology of woodcutting – exploiting water and then electrical power – began to change and improve. The speed of this technological change also accelerated as new metal compounds