September 16, 2025 • 22 mins
This academic text provides a comprehensive overview of prehistoric copper mining in Europe, spanning from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age. It explores the archaeological record of mining sites across the continent, detailing technological processes like ore extraction, beneficiation, and smelting, along with the tools and work practices employed. The sources also analyze the socio-economic and environmental impacts of early copper production, including its role in shaping communities, trade networks, and landscape changes. Furthermore, the text traces the history of research in this field, highlighting key discoveries and the evolution of methodologies for studying ancient mines and metal provenancing.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Imagine an ancient past humans not just you know, living
in the world, but actively digging into it, engineering the
earth to pull out resources.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, it's not just about rocks and basic tools. Yeah,
we're talking about a huge shift really in ingenuity, technology,
society itself exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And today we're taking a deep dive into something pretty
astonishing prehistoric copper mining in Europe. It's a story that
covers what five thirty five hundred.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Years an incredible span, Yeah, roughly fifty five hundred BC
right down to about five hundred BC.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
And our guide for this is William O'Brien's book, Prehistoric
Copper Mining.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
In Europe m h. It's a really comprehensive piece of work,
pulls together something like one hundred and fifty years of
geo archaeological data from all over the continent.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Gives you that big picture of view.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
It really does an unparalleled look, i'd say.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So our mission today is to unpack how these early
Europeans actually found copper, how they got it out, how
they processed it.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
And how that whole process fundamentally changed their relationship with
the world around them.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Right expect some surprise is maybe a few aha moments
about their tech, their social structures, and even.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Their environmental impact, which is something we don't always think
about with ancient people's.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Okay, let's dig in. Then where does this story even start?
Where in Europe did people first tap into copper?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Well, this is where it gets really interesting. Straight away,
the earliest known copper minds we have in Europe they
go back about eight thousand years eight thousand wow. Yeah,
and that discovery it massively shifted how we understood the
beginnings of metallurgy.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
So where are these oldest sites.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
The clearest undisputed evidence comes from the Balkans, places like
Rudniglava and Serbia i Bunar in Bulgaria. We're talking the
sixth maybe fifth millennia BC.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Okay, the Balkans. And why was that such a big deal?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Because it seriously challenged this long held idea, the ex
oriente lux.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Theory light from the East exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
The assumption was that big innovations like metallurgy spread to
Europe from the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
But this Malkan evidence suggests.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
It suggests an independent start, an autonomous development of metallurgy
right there in Southeast Europe. Possibly, you know, even before
some of the key Middle Eastern sites.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So they weren't just waiting for ideas to arrive. They
were innovating.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Themselves, precisely, real pioneers.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
But hey, on how did they even start? Were they
immediately looking for metal to make tools?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
No, not at all. Actually, the very earliest interest seems
to have been in the minerals themselves, but not for
their metal content, like the colorful ones exactly brightly colored
malakite which is green, and azerite, which is blue. They
were collecting these for non metallurgical stuff, think beads, personal ornaments. Okay,
we find malakite and ascerite beads at places like lipenske
(02:44):
Veer in the Danube Gorge linked to these doadripuncorros cris cultures.
Just pretty stones essentially.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
So when does that flip? When did they figure out, hey,
we can get metal out of this.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
That shift seems to become clear around five thousand BC
with the vinny Chine culture also in the Central Balkans.
What's the evidence finding actual copper smelting slag at the
Vincia settlement of Belovoed in eastern Serbia dated to the
later sixth millennium BC. Slag is the waste product of smelting,
So finding it is pretty convincing proof they were actually
producing metal.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
So it goes from pretty rock to valuable metal.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, a huge leap. And it makes you think, doesn't it.
How often does something that starts as maybe just curiosity
or decoration end up sparking a whole technological revolution.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
It's a great point, simple curiosity paving the way. Okay,
so they grasped the potential of copper, but how on Earth,
in this vast landscape did they know where to even
look for it? No geological maps back then.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Right, And this is where you see this incredible empirical
understanding of geology develop. It's remarkable for the time they
learned to read the signs.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well kind of science, How did they understand the deposit well?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
These seem to grasp through observation that ore bodies come
in different shapes and settings. You can think of two
broad types they likely recognized. First, what geologists call concordant deposits.
Think of these like a layer in a cake. The
mineralization follows the bedding the layers of the rock around it,
like a seam exactly. The cook for sheafer deposit in
Europe is a massive example, this metal bearing slate that
(04:16):
stretches literally from England to Poland, huge relatively flat layer.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Wow. Okay, that's one type. What's the other?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Discordant doar bodies? These are different. They cut across the
layers of the host rock. Think veins.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Veins.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
These often formed when hot, mineral rich water flowed into
cracks in the rock and cooled, leaving the minerals behind.
And crucially, these veins could be easier to spot on
the surface. How So their outfrop where the vein meets
the surface might be marked by white quartz or calcite
or sometimes those really colorful oxidized copper minerals we mentioned
(04:51):
malachite and azirite, like natural signposts.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
So they're looking for these geological clues, these anomalies. It's
like early applied geol pretty much.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
But it wasn't just about spotting surface color. They seem
to have understood a deeper process too, which was something
called the zone of super gene enrichment. It sounds complicated,
but the idea is quite simple.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Okay, break it down.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Imagine rain falling and soaking into the ground. As the
water trickles down, it can dissolve copper out of the
rocks near.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
The surface, right, bleaching it out exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Then this copper rich water keeps moving down until it
hits the water table, and at that point the chemistry
changes and the dissolved copper precipitates out again. It falls
out of solution then forms. It forms these really rich
concentrated secondary deposits malachite az right again, sometimes cuprit, even
native copper metal itself, or other secondary minerals like chalcasite.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
So nature was kind of concentrating the copper for them
near the surface decisely.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
These enriched zones were often brightly colored and critically much
richer in copper than the deeper primary ore prime targets.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
For early miners, that's clever nature did the preprocess. So
how did they actively look for these zones or veins
if they weren't immediately obvious. What were their prospecting strategies?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
They developed this knowledge base over generations just through careful
observation in Mediterranean areas like Cypress or Southwest Spain. They
learned to look for gossens sens. Yeah, iron hats. These
are basically zones of rusty iron rich rock, bright reds
and yellows that often form on the surface directly above
a rich ore deposit. A big, clean, your rusty caps exactly.
(06:28):
Less common in the wetter glaciated parts of Europe, but
still found like at Perry's Mountain in Wales.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Okay, what about other regions in Ireland?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
On Mount Gabriel, there's a really cool example. They systematically
search for what they called the copper.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Horizon, a specific layer.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, specific thin bands of gray green sandstone within the
more common purple mud rock. These bands were often stained
green with malachite, a dead giveaway for copper mineralization. They
knew exactly what layer to follow.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Wow, and you mentioned veins.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Earlier, right, Kargali in Russia, a huge mining area. They
seemed to figure out where hidden ore bodies were by
tracing the known veins or mineralized beds underground following their extensions.
It's actually a similar strategy to how early flint miners
found their best material underground.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
They were literally reading the earth. Incredible observational skill passed
down through generations. Yeah, okay, finding it is one thing.
Getting it out of solid rock without dynamite or power tools.
How did they manage that?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
This is where their resourcefulness really shines. You have to
think about the whole process what archaeologists call the Shannapartois,
the operational.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Chain, the sequence of actions right.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
From finding it prospection to getting the rock out, which
is extraction, then concentrating the ore that's beneficiation, and finally
smelting it to get the metal. Each step needed ingenuity.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Let's focus on extraction. That seems like the most brutal part.
What techniques did they use.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
For hard rock? The primary method, and it sounds intense,
was fire setting. Yeah, they'd build a large fire right
up against the rock face they wanted to break. Okay,
let it burn for hours. The intense heat creates tiny
fractures in the rock. Then maybe they'd douse it with water.
The rapid cooling causes thermal shock, shattering the rock surface. Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Then they just hammered away.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Exactly pound away the weakened rock. We see the evidence
smoke stains, online, walls, charcoal left behind at sites like
red Neiglava, Midderberg in Austria, Mount Gabriel.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That must have used a ton of wood.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Oh, enormous amounts. A huge logistical challenge just finding and transporting.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
The fuel and what were they hammering.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
With primarily stone hammers, usually just rounded river cobbles or
beach pebbles, sometimes quite large up to ten kilograms.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And they carried these.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Sometimes really long distances. At Mount Gabriel they hold suitable
stones four kilometers that commissed with in whales, maybe up
to twenty five kilometers.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Just to get hammer stones.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, used handheld or halfted it onto handles, and they
broke often. Finding huge numbers of broken hammerstones in the
spoil heaps is a classic sign of this kind of mining.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Incredible labor. What about for softer rock or cleaning out crevices.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
That's where antler and bone tools came in. Red deer antler,
which is really tough, was perfect for picks and levers.
We find them at lots of sites Elmlagro and Spain
ridden aglovashgrimmas.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
With antler picks, clever and animal.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Bones, especially sturdy limb bones from cattle, maybe split ribs.
They use those as gouges and scrapers. They leave very
distinctive marks on the mine walls. Found a great orm
in Wales, ecked in Kargali and wood.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Did they use wooden tools too?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Definitely wooden shovels, picks, wedges. At Mitterberg they even found
preserved tree trunk ladders used to get deeper into the mine.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Ladders. Wow, how did they see down there?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Pine chips basically bundles of resinous pine splinters used as
torches for light in the deep workings. And wood was
vital for structure too, wooden posts or stemples wedged in
place to support the roof and prevent collapses.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
So basic materials used really intelligently. What about water? Mines
must get.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Wet a constant problem. They developed drainage systems, wooden channels,
sometimes even wooden pipes or launders to divert water flow
away from where they were working. We see evidence of
kunstwith and kelchum ancient plumbing.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It's like early civil engineering underground. Did they ever start
using metal tools to get more metal?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Eventually? Yes, but stone, bone and wood were the mainstays
for a very long time. In some really advanced later
mines like Midderberg and Kargulli, we do find rare examples
of actual bronze picks and shovels, but not widespread, seems
not for direct extraction. Metal acts were probably more important
for cutting all the timber needed for fire setting and
structural supports.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
The scale some of these mines reached is mine.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Bobbling absolutely great orm and whales. They estimate maybe six
kilometers of tunnels going down eighty meters d six kilometers.
And Mitterberg in Austria is even more impressive in some ways,
systematically planned galleries sloping downwards, riven two hundred meters into
the mountain. It suggests a real understanding of basic surveying.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
This sheer effort, the organization working in the dark. It's staggering. Okay,
so they've managed through all this hard work to get
the ore out. What's next? How do you turn that
rock into actual metal?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Right? The next stage is crucial or beneficiation, basically concentrating the.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Good stuff, get rid of the waiste rock exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
This was often done right at the mind sight, a
really laborious process involving crushing the mind rock into smaller
pieces using more stone hammers on flat anvil stones, smashing
it all up, then often hand sorting, picking out the
brightly colored bits, the green melachite, the blue azerite because
those were visibly richer and copper, discarding the duller waste
rock or gang. We see evidence for this crushing and
(11:48):
sorting at Cabriere in France, Ross Island and Ireland.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Mount Gabriel makes sense increase the purity before smelting. Were
there other methods?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yes? In some places, especially the big Austrian minds like
Minderberg and Kelchom, they used water gravity separation, washing the
ore sort of. They'd build wooden troughs or sluice boxes.
Crushed ore was washed down these with water. The heavier
comper minerals would settle out faster than the lighter waste rock,
a bit like panning for gold, but for copper minerals.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Clever using density differences. Okay, so now they have concentrated
or where did the actual smelting happen? The fire part?
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Usually either right there at the mine like a chin
Flon in Spain or Ross Island, or maybe a short
distance away off and downslow, probably to be closer to
essential resources water and especially woodlands for the massive amounts
of charcoal fuel needed for the smelting furnaces. The Austrian
alpine mines often show this pattern.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And what were the early smelting processes like? Were they complex?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
The earliest methods used for those oxidized oors like malachite
or azerite, or for richer complex ores called fulores, were
relatively simple. They used basic bowl furnaces dug into the
ground or built with clay, low tech, retillly, low temperature. Yeah,
and often these processes didn't produce much, if any, recognizable slag.
(13:06):
That makes it hard for archaeologists sometimes because the main
evidence might just be small bits of fused mineral, not
big glassy slag.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Heaps ah okay, So finding evidence can be tricky. Did
the techniques get more advanced later on? Maybe for different
types of ore.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Definitely, especially when they started tackling sulfide ors like copper
iron sulfides, which are trickier in places like Cyprus. By
around the sixteenth century BC, they developed more advanced matte smelting.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Matte smelting, what did that involve?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Much higher temperatures. To get those temperatures, they needed bellows,
probably made of leather, to force air into the furnace
through clay pipes called two years.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Pumping air in to make the fire hotter exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
This higher heat allowed for a better separation of the copper.
It produced a molten mixture called matt and also large
quantities of a distinct type of slag, phyllitic slag, which
is rich in iron silicate. Finding that slag is a
clear sign of this more advanced hotter process. Like political
parades in Cyprus, it shows.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
A real progression in their understanding of chemistry and heat,
doesn't it, adapting their tech to the ore. But as
archaeologists looking back now, is it always obvious exactly which
ores they were really going after?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
That's a really important question. It's what we sometimes call
the what ore dilemma? Eating the leftover waiste dumps, the
spoil heaps don't necessarily tell us the full story of
what they originally targeted. They probably picked out the very
richest bits first, right, and our modern ideas of what
makes an ore deposit rich thinking about overall tonnage, average grade,
those probably weren't their priorities.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
What were their priorities then?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Likely surface accessibility, could they get at it easily and
finding those high grade pogets, even if small, that they
could process effectively with their technology. They were incredibly adaptable,
constantly adjusting based on the local geology. It's early material
science driven by need and observation.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
So These weren't just technical process they were deeply embedded
in their societies. How did all this mining activity actually
shape their communities and lives? Were these full time miners that.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Varied quite a bit if you connected to the bigger picture.
Mining's impact was huge, shaping communities, economies, even the environment.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So not always full time specialists.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Not necessarily. Many smaller mines like Ross Island and Ireland
were probably work seasonally, maybe by miner farmers who did
mining during lulls in the agricultural calendar fitted around farming.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
But the bigger vines.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
They demanded more great orm in Wales work pretty steadily
for a thousand years. That's maybe forty generations of people involved.
And Kargali and the Urals that was colossal. How big
estimates suggest they moved five million tons of ore, producing
maybe one hundred and fifty thousand tons of copper metal.
That kind of scale needed sustained effort, likely by whole
(15:53):
communities like the pastoralist Trubnia culture people known in that region.
Mining was clearly a major part of their econom me a.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Thousand years, that's incredible continuity, and mining is dangerous work
even today. Did that danger that unpredictability lead to any
specific beliefs or rituals.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It seems very likely mining was risky, results weren't guaranteed,
so superstition and ritual probably played a big role.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
What kind of evidence do we see?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
At Eleramo in Spain, they found human remains from around
twenty five hundred to fifteen hundred BC within the mine workings.
The interpretation is these might have been deliberate burials, maybe
offerings to underworld deities, thanking them or asking for protection
and riches offerings.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And at Rudniglava, those early Balkan mines, they found ceramic
altars shaped like animals, placed right at the bottom of
the workings, again possibly offerings to an earth goddess asking
for success.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
And sometimes they deliberately filled minds back in Yes.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
At Rina Clava and i Bonar. Why could be ritual closure,
could be for safety, could even be to hide the
resource from competitors. It suggests a complex relationship chip with
the mine itself.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Two it's woven into their spiritual life too. What about
the broader economy? Did all this copper production create like
a metal boom?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
You could certainly call it that. In some places The
Balkans definitely saw boom in the fifth millennium BC with
way more copper circulating.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Did it travel? Was their trade?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Oh? Absolutely? Copper objects and the raw metal itself moved
through really complex long distance networks. How do we know?
The most famous evidence is probably the oxide.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Ingots oxide because of the.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Shape exactly large standardized slabs of copper, roughly shaped like
a stretched animal hide, maybe for easier transport. We find
them in Bronze age shipwrecks like the amazing Uleubrun wreck
off Turkey. Analysis shows many originated in Cyprus. That points
to major organized sea trade across the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Wow. And did the rise of metal affect other industries
like stone tools profoundly?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
As copper became more available and valued, especially for prestige
items and better tools, the demand for traditional stonels, particularly
things like finally made stone axes, likely decreased. Their value dropped, so.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Stone tool makers might have lost out.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Some probably did. Interestingly, some major mining sites like Great
Worma are actually located near older established stone axe corery sites.
Perhaps those communities deliberately adapted shifting to metal production to
stay relevant.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Fascinating economic shift. But you mentioned huge production one hundred
and fifty thousand tons from Kargali alone. Where did all
that metal go? We don't find that much copper lying
around in archaeological sites.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
That's a really key point. The vast majority of it
has vanished from the archaeological record, vanished how recycling. This
is the crucial difference between metal and things like pottery
or stone tools. Metal can be melted down and reused endlessly.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Ah right, melt down old tools to make new.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Ones, it's exactly, or weapons or ornaments. So the finished
objects we find are just a tiny snapshot, maybe zero
point zero one percent of the total copper ever produced.
It leads to this spectacular imbalance. Archaeologists talk about huge
estimated mine outputs, relatively few recovered artifacts. Mount Gabriel is
(19:09):
another good example of that.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So most of it was just constantly being repurposed, a
truly circular economy in a way. But what about the
environmental cost of all this industry, all that fire setting,
all the smelting.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's the other side of the coin. And yes, there
were significant environmental consequences, especially link to fuel.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
The demand for wood must have been immense.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Absolutely huge, fire setting, smelting furnaces, even just domestic fires
for the mining communities. For many smaller mines like Mount Gabriel,
studies suggest the impact was localized. They probably managed the
woodlands use selective felling allowed for regrowth.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
But the really big operations the impact.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Could be massive, potentially devastating. Cyprus, for instance, estimates suggests
the island might have been deforested up to sixteen times
over two millennia just to fuel copper smelting. That's about
one point two million cubic meters of.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Wood sixteen times. That's staggering and Gaulli.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
In Russia, that level of mining might have led to
the deforestation of something like three thousand square kilometers of
the surrounding steppe woodlands, a.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Massive foot crown. Were there other impacts like pollution?
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yes, we have evidence for that too, preserved in peat
bogs and lake sediments near mining areas.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
What kind of evidence.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Elevated levels of heavy metals copper, lead, arsenic, et cetera
compared to background levels. You'd see spikes in the sediment
layers corresponding to periods of intense mining and smelting activity.
Sites like kumiswith Mount Gabriel, Lee Bramman in the French
Alps all show this.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
So air pollution from smelting fumes, dust blowing off the
spoil heaps exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It shows that significant environmental pollution from industrial activity isn't
just a modern problem, It has deep historical roots.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
It really paints a complex picture. So today we've journeyed
from those earliest tints of copper use in the Balkans
right through to these almost industrial scale mining operations of
the Bronze Age.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, we've seen incredible ingenuity in finding the ore, amazing
techologies for getting it out and processing it.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
In complex societies, organizing around it, trading it, developing rituals
for it.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And also significantly impacting their environment in the process. It
really transformed their world.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
This deep dive really underscores that these weren't, you know,
primitive people just stumbling on.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Stuff, not at all. They were sophisticated observers, innovators, organizers.
Their relationship with the Earth, with resources was incredibly nuanced
and intentional.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
They figured out complex geology, chemistry, engineering, developed logistics, trade routes.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And that knowledge that drive fundamentally shaped human history for
thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
So as we think about the scale of what they
achieved the production, the trade, but also that environmental footprint.
Maybe there are lessons for us today.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It certainly makes you think about our own relationship with resources.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, what hidden resources? Maybe not physical ones, but ideas
or potentials. Do we overlook today a bit like they
initially overlooked low grade ores? And could our approach change
if we adopted maybe a bit more of their long
term integrated perspective, thinking about the whole system, the whole
relationship with the planet.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
That's a deep thought to end on what are we
missing and how might we look at it differently?
Imagine an ancient past humans not just you know, living
in the world, but actively digging into it, engineering the
earth to pull out resources.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, it's not just about rocks and basic tools. Yeah,
we're talking about a huge shift really in ingenuity, technology,
society itself exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And today we're taking a deep dive into something pretty
astonishing prehistoric copper mining in Europe. It's a story that
covers what five thirty five hundred.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Years an incredible span, Yeah, roughly fifty five hundred BC
right down to about five hundred BC.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
And our guide for this is William O'Brien's book, Prehistoric
Copper Mining.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
In Europe m h. It's a really comprehensive piece of work,
pulls together something like one hundred and fifty years of
geo archaeological data from all over the continent.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Gives you that big picture of view.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
It really does an unparalleled look, i'd say.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So our mission today is to unpack how these early
Europeans actually found copper, how they got it out, how
they processed it.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
And how that whole process fundamentally changed their relationship with
the world around them.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Right expect some surprise is maybe a few aha moments
about their tech, their social structures, and even.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Their environmental impact, which is something we don't always think
about with ancient people's.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Okay, let's dig in. Then where does this story even start?
Where in Europe did people first tap into copper?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Well, this is where it gets really interesting. Straight away,
the earliest known copper minds we have in Europe they
go back about eight thousand years eight thousand wow. Yeah,
and that discovery it massively shifted how we understood the
beginnings of metallurgy.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
So where are these oldest sites.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
The clearest undisputed evidence comes from the Balkans, places like
Rudniglava and Serbia i Bunar in Bulgaria. We're talking the
sixth maybe fifth millennia BC.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Okay, the Balkans. And why was that such a big deal?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Because it seriously challenged this long held idea, the ex
oriente lux.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Theory light from the East exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
The assumption was that big innovations like metallurgy spread to
Europe from the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
But this Malkan evidence suggests.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
It suggests an independent start, an autonomous development of metallurgy
right there in Southeast Europe. Possibly, you know, even before
some of the key Middle Eastern sites.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So they weren't just waiting for ideas to arrive. They
were innovating.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Themselves, precisely, real pioneers.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
But hey, on how did they even start? Were they
immediately looking for metal to make tools?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
No, not at all. Actually, the very earliest interest seems
to have been in the minerals themselves, but not for
their metal content, like the colorful ones exactly brightly colored
malakite which is green, and azerite, which is blue. They
were collecting these for non metallurgical stuff, think beads, personal ornaments. Okay,
we find malakite and ascerite beads at places like lipenske
(02:44):
Veer in the Danube Gorge linked to these doadripuncorros cris cultures.
Just pretty stones essentially.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
So when does that flip? When did they figure out, hey,
we can get metal out of this.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
That shift seems to become clear around five thousand BC
with the vinny Chine culture also in the Central Balkans.
What's the evidence finding actual copper smelting slag at the
Vincia settlement of Belovoed in eastern Serbia dated to the
later sixth millennium BC. Slag is the waste product of smelting,
So finding it is pretty convincing proof they were actually
producing metal.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
So it goes from pretty rock to valuable metal.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, a huge leap. And it makes you think, doesn't it.
How often does something that starts as maybe just curiosity
or decoration end up sparking a whole technological revolution.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
It's a great point, simple curiosity paving the way. Okay,
so they grasped the potential of copper, but how on Earth,
in this vast landscape did they know where to even
look for it? No geological maps back then.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Right, And this is where you see this incredible empirical
understanding of geology develop. It's remarkable for the time they
learned to read the signs.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well kind of science, How did they understand the deposit well?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
These seem to grasp through observation that ore bodies come
in different shapes and settings. You can think of two
broad types they likely recognized. First, what geologists call concordant deposits.
Think of these like a layer in a cake. The
mineralization follows the bedding the layers of the rock around it,
like a seam exactly. The cook for sheafer deposit in
Europe is a massive example, this metal bearing slate that
(04:16):
stretches literally from England to Poland, huge relatively flat layer.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Wow. Okay, that's one type. What's the other?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Discordant doar bodies? These are different. They cut across the
layers of the host rock. Think veins.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Veins.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
These often formed when hot, mineral rich water flowed into
cracks in the rock and cooled, leaving the minerals behind.
And crucially, these veins could be easier to spot on
the surface. How So their outfrop where the vein meets
the surface might be marked by white quartz or calcite
or sometimes those really colorful oxidized copper minerals we mentioned
(04:51):
malachite and azirite, like natural signposts.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
So they're looking for these geological clues, these anomalies. It's
like early applied geol pretty much.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
But it wasn't just about spotting surface color. They seem
to have understood a deeper process too, which was something
called the zone of super gene enrichment. It sounds complicated,
but the idea is quite simple.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Okay, break it down.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Imagine rain falling and soaking into the ground. As the
water trickles down, it can dissolve copper out of the
rocks near.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
The surface, right, bleaching it out exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Then this copper rich water keeps moving down until it
hits the water table, and at that point the chemistry
changes and the dissolved copper precipitates out again. It falls
out of solution then forms. It forms these really rich
concentrated secondary deposits malachite az right again, sometimes cuprit, even
native copper metal itself, or other secondary minerals like chalcasite.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
So nature was kind of concentrating the copper for them
near the surface decisely.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
These enriched zones were often brightly colored and critically much
richer in copper than the deeper primary ore prime targets.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
For early miners, that's clever nature did the preprocess. So
how did they actively look for these zones or veins
if they weren't immediately obvious. What were their prospecting strategies?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
They developed this knowledge base over generations just through careful
observation in Mediterranean areas like Cypress or Southwest Spain. They
learned to look for gossens sens. Yeah, iron hats. These
are basically zones of rusty iron rich rock, bright reds
and yellows that often form on the surface directly above
a rich ore deposit. A big, clean, your rusty caps exactly.
(06:28):
Less common in the wetter glaciated parts of Europe, but
still found like at Perry's Mountain in Wales.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Okay, what about other regions in Ireland?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
On Mount Gabriel, there's a really cool example. They systematically
search for what they called the copper.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Horizon, a specific layer.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, specific thin bands of gray green sandstone within the
more common purple mud rock. These bands were often stained
green with malachite, a dead giveaway for copper mineralization. They
knew exactly what layer to follow.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Wow, and you mentioned veins.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Earlier, right, Kargali in Russia, a huge mining area. They
seemed to figure out where hidden ore bodies were by
tracing the known veins or mineralized beds underground following their extensions.
It's actually a similar strategy to how early flint miners
found their best material underground.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
They were literally reading the earth. Incredible observational skill passed
down through generations. Yeah, okay, finding it is one thing.
Getting it out of solid rock without dynamite or power tools.
How did they manage that?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
This is where their resourcefulness really shines. You have to
think about the whole process what archaeologists call the Shannapartois,
the operational.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Chain, the sequence of actions right.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
From finding it prospection to getting the rock out, which
is extraction, then concentrating the ore that's beneficiation, and finally
smelting it to get the metal. Each step needed ingenuity.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Let's focus on extraction. That seems like the most brutal part.
What techniques did they use.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
For hard rock? The primary method, and it sounds intense,
was fire setting. Yeah, they'd build a large fire right
up against the rock face they wanted to break. Okay,
let it burn for hours. The intense heat creates tiny
fractures in the rock. Then maybe they'd douse it with water.
The rapid cooling causes thermal shock, shattering the rock surface. Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Then they just hammered away.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Exactly pound away the weakened rock. We see the evidence
smoke stains, online, walls, charcoal left behind at sites like
red Neiglava, Midderberg in Austria, Mount Gabriel.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That must have used a ton of wood.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Oh, enormous amounts. A huge logistical challenge just finding and transporting.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
The fuel and what were they hammering.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
With primarily stone hammers, usually just rounded river cobbles or
beach pebbles, sometimes quite large up to ten kilograms.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And they carried these.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Sometimes really long distances. At Mount Gabriel they hold suitable
stones four kilometers that commissed with in whales, maybe up
to twenty five kilometers.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Just to get hammer stones.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, used handheld or halfted it onto handles, and they
broke often. Finding huge numbers of broken hammerstones in the
spoil heaps is a classic sign of this kind of mining.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Incredible labor. What about for softer rock or cleaning out crevices.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
That's where antler and bone tools came in. Red deer antler,
which is really tough, was perfect for picks and levers.
We find them at lots of sites Elmlagro and Spain
ridden aglovashgrimmas.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
With antler picks, clever and animal.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Bones, especially sturdy limb bones from cattle, maybe split ribs.
They use those as gouges and scrapers. They leave very
distinctive marks on the mine walls. Found a great orm
in Wales, ecked in Kargali and wood.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Did they use wooden tools too?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Definitely wooden shovels, picks, wedges. At Mitterberg they even found
preserved tree trunk ladders used to get deeper into the mine.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Ladders. Wow, how did they see down there?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Pine chips basically bundles of resinous pine splinters used as
torches for light in the deep workings. And wood was
vital for structure too, wooden posts or stemples wedged in
place to support the roof and prevent collapses.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
So basic materials used really intelligently. What about water? Mines
must get.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Wet a constant problem. They developed drainage systems, wooden channels,
sometimes even wooden pipes or launders to divert water flow
away from where they were working. We see evidence of
kunstwith and kelchum ancient plumbing.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
It's like early civil engineering underground. Did they ever start
using metal tools to get more metal?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Eventually? Yes, but stone, bone and wood were the mainstays
for a very long time. In some really advanced later
mines like Midderberg and Kargulli, we do find rare examples
of actual bronze picks and shovels, but not widespread, seems
not for direct extraction. Metal acts were probably more important
for cutting all the timber needed for fire setting and
structural supports.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
The scale some of these mines reached is mine.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Bobbling absolutely great orm and whales. They estimate maybe six
kilometers of tunnels going down eighty meters d six kilometers.
And Mitterberg in Austria is even more impressive in some ways,
systematically planned galleries sloping downwards, riven two hundred meters into
the mountain. It suggests a real understanding of basic surveying.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
This sheer effort, the organization working in the dark. It's staggering. Okay,
so they've managed through all this hard work to get
the ore out. What's next? How do you turn that
rock into actual metal?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Right? The next stage is crucial or beneficiation, basically concentrating the.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Good stuff, get rid of the waiste rock exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
This was often done right at the mind sight, a
really laborious process involving crushing the mind rock into smaller
pieces using more stone hammers on flat anvil stones, smashing
it all up, then often hand sorting, picking out the
brightly colored bits, the green melachite, the blue azerite because
those were visibly richer and copper, discarding the duller waste
rock or gang. We see evidence for this crushing and
(11:48):
sorting at Cabriere in France, Ross Island and Ireland.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Mount Gabriel makes sense increase the purity before smelting. Were
there other methods?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yes? In some places, especially the big Austrian minds like
Minderberg and Kelchom, they used water gravity separation, washing the
ore sort of. They'd build wooden troughs or sluice boxes.
Crushed ore was washed down these with water. The heavier
comper minerals would settle out faster than the lighter waste rock,
a bit like panning for gold, but for copper minerals.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Clever using density differences. Okay, so now they have concentrated
or where did the actual smelting happen? The fire part?
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Usually either right there at the mine like a chin
Flon in Spain or Ross Island, or maybe a short
distance away off and downslow, probably to be closer to
essential resources water and especially woodlands for the massive amounts
of charcoal fuel needed for the smelting furnaces. The Austrian
alpine mines often show this pattern.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And what were the early smelting processes like? Were they complex?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
The earliest methods used for those oxidized oors like malachite
or azerite, or for richer complex ores called fulores, were
relatively simple. They used basic bowl furnaces dug into the
ground or built with clay, low tech, retillly, low temperature. Yeah,
and often these processes didn't produce much, if any, recognizable slag.
(13:06):
That makes it hard for archaeologists sometimes because the main
evidence might just be small bits of fused mineral, not
big glassy slag.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Heaps ah okay, So finding evidence can be tricky. Did
the techniques get more advanced later on? Maybe for different
types of ore.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Definitely, especially when they started tackling sulfide ors like copper
iron sulfides, which are trickier in places like Cyprus. By
around the sixteenth century BC, they developed more advanced matte smelting.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Matte smelting, what did that involve?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Much higher temperatures. To get those temperatures, they needed bellows,
probably made of leather, to force air into the furnace
through clay pipes called two years.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Pumping air in to make the fire hotter exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
This higher heat allowed for a better separation of the copper.
It produced a molten mixture called matt and also large
quantities of a distinct type of slag, phyllitic slag, which
is rich in iron silicate. Finding that slag is a
clear sign of this more advanced hotter process. Like political
parades in Cyprus, it shows.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
A real progression in their understanding of chemistry and heat,
doesn't it, adapting their tech to the ore. But as
archaeologists looking back now, is it always obvious exactly which
ores they were really going after?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
That's a really important question. It's what we sometimes call
the what ore dilemma? Eating the leftover waiste dumps, the
spoil heaps don't necessarily tell us the full story of
what they originally targeted. They probably picked out the very
richest bits first, right, and our modern ideas of what
makes an ore deposit rich thinking about overall tonnage, average grade,
those probably weren't their priorities.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
What were their priorities then?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Likely surface accessibility, could they get at it easily and
finding those high grade pogets, even if small, that they
could process effectively with their technology. They were incredibly adaptable,
constantly adjusting based on the local geology. It's early material
science driven by need and observation.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
So These weren't just technical process they were deeply embedded
in their societies. How did all this mining activity actually
shape their communities and lives? Were these full time miners that.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Varied quite a bit if you connected to the bigger picture.
Mining's impact was huge, shaping communities, economies, even the environment.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So not always full time specialists.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Not necessarily. Many smaller mines like Ross Island and Ireland
were probably work seasonally, maybe by miner farmers who did
mining during lulls in the agricultural calendar fitted around farming.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
But the bigger vines.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
They demanded more great orm in Wales work pretty steadily
for a thousand years. That's maybe forty generations of people involved.
And Kargali and the Urals that was colossal. How big
estimates suggest they moved five million tons of ore, producing
maybe one hundred and fifty thousand tons of copper metal.
That kind of scale needed sustained effort, likely by whole
(15:53):
communities like the pastoralist Trubnia culture people known in that region.
Mining was clearly a major part of their econom me a.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Thousand years, that's incredible continuity, and mining is dangerous work
even today. Did that danger that unpredictability lead to any
specific beliefs or rituals.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It seems very likely mining was risky, results weren't guaranteed,
so superstition and ritual probably played a big role.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
What kind of evidence do we see?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
At Eleramo in Spain, they found human remains from around
twenty five hundred to fifteen hundred BC within the mine workings.
The interpretation is these might have been deliberate burials, maybe
offerings to underworld deities, thanking them or asking for protection
and riches offerings.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And at Rudniglava, those early Balkan mines, they found ceramic
altars shaped like animals, placed right at the bottom of
the workings, again possibly offerings to an earth goddess asking
for success.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
And sometimes they deliberately filled minds back in Yes.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
At Rina Clava and i Bonar. Why could be ritual closure,
could be for safety, could even be to hide the
resource from competitors. It suggests a complex relationship chip with
the mine itself.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Two it's woven into their spiritual life too. What about
the broader economy? Did all this copper production create like
a metal boom?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
You could certainly call it that. In some places The
Balkans definitely saw boom in the fifth millennium BC with
way more copper circulating.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Did it travel? Was their trade?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Oh? Absolutely? Copper objects and the raw metal itself moved
through really complex long distance networks. How do we know?
The most famous evidence is probably the oxide.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Ingots oxide because of the.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Shape exactly large standardized slabs of copper, roughly shaped like
a stretched animal hide, maybe for easier transport. We find
them in Bronze age shipwrecks like the amazing Uleubrun wreck
off Turkey. Analysis shows many originated in Cyprus. That points
to major organized sea trade across the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Wow. And did the rise of metal affect other industries
like stone tools profoundly?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
As copper became more available and valued, especially for prestige
items and better tools, the demand for traditional stonels, particularly
things like finally made stone axes, likely decreased. Their value dropped, so.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Stone tool makers might have lost out.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Some probably did. Interestingly, some major mining sites like Great
Worma are actually located near older established stone axe corery sites.
Perhaps those communities deliberately adapted shifting to metal production to
stay relevant.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Fascinating economic shift. But you mentioned huge production one hundred
and fifty thousand tons from Kargali alone. Where did all
that metal go? We don't find that much copper lying
around in archaeological sites.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
That's a really key point. The vast majority of it
has vanished from the archaeological record, vanished how recycling. This
is the crucial difference between metal and things like pottery
or stone tools. Metal can be melted down and reused endlessly.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Ah right, melt down old tools to make new.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Ones, it's exactly, or weapons or ornaments. So the finished
objects we find are just a tiny snapshot, maybe zero
point zero one percent of the total copper ever produced.
It leads to this spectacular imbalance. Archaeologists talk about huge
estimated mine outputs, relatively few recovered artifacts. Mount Gabriel is
(19:09):
another good example of that.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So most of it was just constantly being repurposed, a
truly circular economy in a way. But what about the
environmental cost of all this industry, all that fire setting,
all the smelting.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's the other side of the coin. And yes, there
were significant environmental consequences, especially link to fuel.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
The demand for wood must have been immense.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Absolutely huge, fire setting, smelting furnaces, even just domestic fires
for the mining communities. For many smaller mines like Mount Gabriel,
studies suggest the impact was localized. They probably managed the
woodlands use selective felling allowed for regrowth.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
But the really big operations the impact.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Could be massive, potentially devastating. Cyprus, for instance, estimates suggests
the island might have been deforested up to sixteen times
over two millennia just to fuel copper smelting. That's about
one point two million cubic meters of.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Wood sixteen times. That's staggering and Gaulli.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
In Russia, that level of mining might have led to
the deforestation of something like three thousand square kilometers of
the surrounding steppe woodlands, a.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Massive foot crown. Were there other impacts like pollution?
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yes, we have evidence for that too, preserved in peat
bogs and lake sediments near mining areas.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
What kind of evidence.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Elevated levels of heavy metals copper, lead, arsenic, et cetera
compared to background levels. You'd see spikes in the sediment
layers corresponding to periods of intense mining and smelting activity.
Sites like kumiswith Mount Gabriel, Lee Bramman in the French
Alps all show this.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
So air pollution from smelting fumes, dust blowing off the
spoil heaps exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It shows that significant environmental pollution from industrial activity isn't
just a modern problem, It has deep historical roots.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
It really paints a complex picture. So today we've journeyed
from those earliest tints of copper use in the Balkans
right through to these almost industrial scale mining operations of
the Bronze Age.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, we've seen incredible ingenuity in finding the ore, amazing
techologies for getting it out and processing it.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
In complex societies, organizing around it, trading it, developing rituals
for it.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And also significantly impacting their environment in the process. It
really transformed their world.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
This deep dive really underscores that these weren't, you know,
primitive people just stumbling on.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Stuff, not at all. They were sophisticated observers, innovators, organizers.
Their relationship with the Earth, with resources was incredibly nuanced
and intentional.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
They figured out complex geology, chemistry, engineering, developed logistics, trade routes.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And that knowledge that drive fundamentally shaped human history for
thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
So as we think about the scale of what they
achieved the production, the trade, but also that environmental footprint.
Maybe there are lessons for us today.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It certainly makes you think about our own relationship with resources.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, what hidden resources? Maybe not physical ones, but ideas
or potentials. Do we overlook today a bit like they
initially overlooked low grade ores? And could our approach change
if we adopted maybe a bit more of their long
term integrated perspective, thinking about the whole system, the whole
relationship with the planet.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
That's a deep thought to end on what are we
missing and how might we look at it differently?
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