These Ancient Mines Transformed Prehistoric Europe

There are many Bronze Age mines in the Old World that collectively produced thousands of tons of copper, enough to make millions of tools, weapons and decorations for Europe and the Near East. Way back in the Neolithic in Europe, in this case between 5800 to 5600 BC, people in the area of Hungary and Romania today were making cylindrical copper beads. Now they never excavated enough to make tools and weapons, but clearly these Neolithic Europeans noticed these special ores in the ground at their feet and they knew enough about breaking, hammering and heating them to make very special small objects of personal ornamentation. And they could only do this because they had access to these metallic minerals in the mountains of Transylvania. But very early mining activity is hard to find archaeologically. For much of this period and right through the Bronze Age, mining activity could be small scale and seasonal. And the ore extraction was only rarely done through tunnelling. Copper ores were visible at the surface and they would be dug up with wood, bone, antler and stone tools and later copper and bronze tools would be used. Early European copper mines then would be open pits and sometimes trenches that followed ore veins running along the surface. Some copper concentrations were so large that the mine workings would eventually become more like large open cast areas. Larger prehistoric mines like this are more detectable archaeologically, but they are also likely to be obscured by millennia of erosion and filled with sediment that archaeologists need to remove to get down to the ancient workings. A bigger problem for archaeology is that ancient ore extraction has often been damaged or completely obliterated by more recent mining practices, perhaps from the medieval era or by industrial extraction through dynamite and machines. On the Greek island of Seraphos, there is evidence of smelting dating from the early Bronze Age in the form of slag heaps and furnaces. The island is relatively rich in metal resources, particularly iron, which has been extensively mined in modern times and it's possible this later ore extraction has destroyed the early Bronze Age mining activity on the island, while the more remote smelting sites survived. But some places were so rich in copper that they became long-lasting mining production centres. An excellent example is the island of Cyprus. During the Bronze Age, Cyprus was a major copper producer and exporter. So much so, that the name of the island itself might come from the word the local people there used for copper. And it continued to extract and export so much, for so long, that the Romans called the substance aeus cyprium, meaning the metal of Cyprus, which became the Latin word cuprum and ultimately the English word copper. And the ancient mines and metal processing sites on Cyprus have been extensively studied. In fact, practically every ancient settlement on Cyprus has evidence of metal extraction and processing activity. Once processed, the copper was commonly converted into what are called ox-hide ingots for export. The shape of the ingots is said to resemble a stretched-out animal hide. It's believed this shape was developed so that they could be lashed into place with ropes for transport. On land, this would be on the backs of wagons and donkeys, but mostly these ingots were transported by boat across the Mediterranean and through the long rivers of Europe and the Near East. We know the scale of production not only by the extent of the ancient mine workings, but also by the size of the shipments that were being sent. For example, we have the Uluburun shipwreck sinking off the southern coast of Anatolia in around 1300 BC. It was likely a Canaanite ship, sailing westwards with its cargo towards Mycenaean Greece. It carried 10 tonnes of Cypriot copper in 354 ox-hide ingots and a tonne of tin, which together would have made 11 tonnes of bronze. And we know the copper came from Cyprus because of a provenancing method called lead isotope analysis. They take samples of the ingots and measure three lead isotope ratios of the traces of lead that occur naturally in the copper, and the data is compared to samples taken from various ore deposits because each mine location has its own specific chemical fingerprint that can be matched to the artefacts. Archaeologists can use this technique not just on copper and other metals with lead traces, but on other artefacts where minerals containing lead were used in their manufacture, like glazes, glass and paint. Another provenancing method used by archaeologists is the analysis of the overall composition of the metals in the artefacts, carefully measuring the trace elements present and comparing the results with specific sites. The unique geology of mineral-bearing ores around the world is detectable in the metals smelted from them. Using multiple provenancing methods together, along with other archaeological techniques, can greatly improve the accuracy of results. Evidence for the scale of the mining here also comes from the eight letters from Alashia, a Bronze Age kingdom on Cyprus, found in the archives of Amarna in Egypt, dating to the mid-14th century BC. These tablets say that 897 ingots of copper, which is between 24 to 27 tons, have been sent to Egypt, and that just the exports from one kingdom on Cyprus, sent to Egypt over a period of 30 years or less. Egypt would have imported copper from other places, and likewise Cyprus exported to other lands during this brief era, so there's no doubt that enormous amounts of copper were extracted from the island. Oxide ingots from Cyprus have also been found as far east as a Mesopotamian city near modern Baghdad, as far west as Marseille, as far north as Germany, and as far south as the Nile Delta. We know for certain that the mines of Cyprus were a major source of the copper used in Bronze Age Europe and the Near East. There is also written evidence of copper and bronze use in Bronze Age Greece, in the form of Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean Palace archives, which record the receipt or distribution of volumes of commodities. The fragments from the Palace of Pylos alone, dating from between about 1400 to 1200 BC, mention amounts of copper adding up to about 1,000 kilos. The Mycenaeans imported Cypriot copper, but there was also copper mining on the mainland and on the islands of the Aegean right back to the early Bronze Age. Some of the Cycladic islands, like Kythnos and Seraphos, provided copper to the Cycladic civilization that thrived from before 3000 BC until they were absorbed by the Minoan civilization from Crete around 2000 BC. 5,000 years ago, these Aegean islands were mined and the ores processed on steep hills overlooking the sea, so that prevailing winds, rising up the slopes, would help to blast air into the furnaces that they constructed for smelting. Metal processing started very early on the island of Crete too. There is evidence of copper working activity as far back as what they call the final Neolithic period there, between 4500 and 3500 BC. But metal working and copper mining in Southeastern Europe has an even more ancient origin in the Balkans and Carpathians. As mentioned earlier, the first phase of copper working here began before 5000 BC and Balkan smiths from about 4800 to 4600 BC began making moulds able to withstand the heat of molten copper and began casting copper tools and weapons. These were used and exchanged across Southeastern Europe by about 4600 to 4500 BC. During this era, prospecting for new ore sources, mining and long-distance trade for raw copper and finished products initiated an era of interconnectivity that extended down to the Aegean and east across the steppe to the Volga. Kilns and smelters for pottery and copper consumed the forests and pollen cores taken in Romania near ancient settlements show significant reductions in local forest cover at this time. But why did metal working develop so early and so extensively in the Balkans? Well, it was a fertile area with large populations who could afford specialist craftsmen working initially in pottery and then in metal work. However, it was only possible due to the presence of copper-bearing ores in the southern Balkans. It was their exploitation that fuelled this boom in European metalworking. But after around 4000 BC these Balkan civilisations declined and copper mines here ceased production. Copper mining then expanded further north and west into the Carpathians and the Hungarian plain and on into Central Europe. We know this is the case because artefacts across the region from this era have been tested and found to match the signatures from these Carpathian and Pannonian mines. But mining was not limited to mountainous regions. Across the European steppes to the east, copper ores in the form of azurite and malachite appear along with iron-bearing sandstones between the central North Caucasus region and the Ural mountains. These ores were exposed by water erosion on the sides of many stream valleys and tributaries of the Volga and were mined by people from the Yamnaya culture. Again we know this for certain because organic material in mining pits have been dated to this era and copper artefacts like axes, daggers and pins from Yamnaya graves have been chemically matched to local ores. Incidentally, these steppe miners and metalworkers were also amongst the first in the world to experiment with forging iron. A Catacomb period grave from around 2500 BC, well over a thousand years before the Iron Age, contained a knife with a handle made of arsenical bronze and a blade made of iron. Not meteoric iron like some found in ancient Egypt, but forged of iron smelted from ore long before iron began to be used in Hittite, Anatolia or the Near East. Copper mining on the steppe continued and expanded throughout the Bronze Age, providing not only the metal these people needed for their own tools and weapons, but also providing valuable exports to the civilisations in the ancient Near East. However, looking at the rest of Europe, ore deposits are concentrated in mountainous regions, typically far from the fertile lowlands where most of the people lived. These copper production centres include mines in Ireland, Wales, England, Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. Several of these large copper mining areas were able at different times to establish dominant positions in the metal supply of various regions. For example, powerful chiefdoms in Central Europe after around 2000 BC mined, processed and exported copper from the mountainous regions they controlled. The rulers of the Unetica culture mined the Ore Mountains along what is today the Czech-German border and the Slovakian Carpathians. Their wealth in metals made them an essential part of a trade network, linking them with the Atlantic coasts of Britain and Baltic Scandinavia. The Eastern Alps too were a major copper production centre with a large cluster of Bronze Age mines. They produced distinctive small rib ingots and ring ingots, which are found in deposits across Central Europe. Over 2000 of these rib ingots have been examined by archaeologists and they weigh between 90 and 120 grams. They were likely made in these forms for ease of transport, before being melted down for conversion into weapons and tools. From a first glance, you might imagine the ring ingots were worn for personal decoration, but that's likely not the case. Their rough surfaces are generally unfinished, pitted and still showing casting seams, but they might also have served as a medium of exchange to facilitate trade, and were perhaps an easy way for powerful chiefs to accumulate wealth. The especially productive Mitterberg mines in the Austrian Alps produced an estimated 20,000 metric tons of copper over a period of about 1,000 years, between 1700 and 700 BC. That's enough copper to produce around 200 million rib ingots. By the Middle Bronze Age in Europe, copper and the copper-tin alloy we call bronze was not a rare substance. In southern Scandinavia alone, in the period between 1500 to 1100 BC, it is estimated that between 10,000 to 20,000 swords were interred, buried in the earth with their deceased owners in their burial mounds. And of course those swords would need to be continually replaced by the sons of the Bronze Age warriors of Denmark. Over the same period in the same region, the approximately 22,000 farmsteads there would have had an average of at least two bronze axes and two bronze sickles for working the farm. And by the way, this is a very conservative estimate. Bronze Age farmsteads with better preservation in Britain and Switzerland have far more tools and weapons. At the must-farm site in Britain, from around 1000 BC, every house had a bronze assemblage that included seven axes, two spears, two sickles, two chisels or gouges, and a razor. By the late Bronze Age, so much was being mined that the metal had become an everyday substance. It was valuable, of course, and incredibly useful. You would have taken great care of your tools, just as we do now, but it was not rare. Scandinavia had no copper mines in the Bronze Age, and so they imported everything they needed from various other places. Many studies have been carried out to discover exactly where the people of the Nordic Bronze Age got their metal over the centuries. Artifacts have been tested and the copper found to originate from specific mines in Central Europe, the Italian Alps, Iberia, Britain and Ireland, and possibly also from Sardinia and Cyprus. Different sources had primacy in different eras, as production at specific European mines rose and fell, and the chiefs controlling them grew and declined in power. Copper mining in Britain and Ireland took off between 2400 and 2200 BC, and metallurgy here was boosted by the presence of tin mines in southwest Britain. This meant that the transition between arsenical copper and tin bronze took place earlier here than much of the rest of Europe where there were no tin mines. The chiefs of southwest Britain, from what's called the Wessex culture, grew wealthy and powerful in part from their control of the tin mines and the trade in and out of Britain. After the enormously productive Great Ore Mine in North Wales started to become exhausted in around 1300 BC, Britain began importing most of its copper from various mines in Europe, most of all, perhaps, from mines in the Eastern Alps. Right through to the end of the Bronze Age and beyond, the copper mines of Europe produced thousands of tons of copper that made millions of ornaments, tools and weapons. To quote from a recent paper on the subject, The production, movement and consumption of copper-based metals in the European Bronze Age represents by far the most intensively archaeologically, geologically and archaeometallurgically investigated period and region in world archaeology." We know very well where the copper for Bronze Age Europe came from, and it was not North America. If you enjoy my videos, please support this channel on Patreon to ensure I can keep making them in future. If you can spare $3 a month to support this work, please follow the link in the video description. Now please watch this video focusing on one specific copper mine on the Great Orme in North Wales that helped transform Bronze Age Britain. Thank you for watching.