The Largest Prehistoric Copper Mine in the World

[@DanDavisHistory]

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.

[@karldergrosse-333]

I honeslty like Tacticus lol. It's a fun little game to play on mobile.

[@DanDavisHistory]

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.

[@ELIOSANFELIU]

Nice work¡¡¡Congrats¡¡

[@KevinSmith-yh6tl]

​@@DanDavisHistory I do believe I'll give it a go. Thanks

[@thesaltyspacecowboy8531]

@@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.

[@Stu161]

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.

[@eedobee]

I’ve never worked in an ancient copper mine.

[@prolarka]

Indeed, some of them were actually smarter than today's average people.

[@deadpanfish]

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.

[@jamesbizs]

⁠@maybe they were smarter than YOU, but you can’t compare them to the rest of us.

[@jamesbizs]

Who was mystifying them?

[@JustGrowingUp84]

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!

[@JonnoPlays]

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.

[@KernowekTim]

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.

[@georgeelder8415]

Hence the Cornish pasty...

[@TheLRider]

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.

[@TheLRider]

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..

[@barry7608]

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.

[@KernowekTim]

@@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.

[@Ian-yf7uf]

Hell yeah! New Dan Davis just dropped

[@BromiumProductions1]

DANG! 😂 you beat ne to the comment!

[@kingjoe3rd]

Dan has the best videos. His video on the Sumerians is the best one I’ve ever seen on the subject.

[@mandjzi]

Glad I am not the only one feeling this way!

[@FenceThis]

ok, - what happened to the old ?

[@Rando-user-zm1fx]

😐

[@lindahamilton800]

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.

[@seanmalloy7249]

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.

[@natehicks8323]

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.

[@scrapspoon]

Remember, copper can spawn in many underground locations, but it tends to generate in its highest concentration in the elevation levels Y=47-48.

[@CJScott-po3nc]

Why is that? Curious noob asking.

[@somika87]

​@@CJScott-po3ncmust be Dwarf Fortress. (What Minecraft is based on)

[@kingofthend]

No matter where it is mined everybody knows that Ea-nāṣir sells the highest grade of copper.

[@MarkhamShawPyle]

Nanni gave one star...

[@alexsky104]

​@@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

[@MarkhamShawPyle]

@@alexsky104 Arbituram has entered the chat.

[@lotoreo]

Ea-Nasir is a scammer and we all know it

[@FloatingOer]

I've been trying to reach you about your copper's extended warranty

[@billmiller4972]

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?

[@DanDavisHistory]

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.

[@billmiller4972]

@@DanDavisHistory Those mines are thousands of years old. Methinks they won't be sad if they have to wait some more years.

[@Bzhydack]

​@@DanDavisHistoryit will be nice also to see material about neolithic Flint Mines, they are fascinating too!

[@AndrewBlucher]

Hi Dan, backfilling passages has a practical utility: it takes less effort than carrying the material to the surface.

[@SchoolforHackers]

Very good point. An abandoned passage is simply a resource.

[@EarthScienceTV]

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. 🌳➡🔥

[@kovona]

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.

[@kovona]

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.

[@glory2cybertron]

Humanity has never understood even the basics of sustainability and this will be the end of our species.

[@halbouma6720]

What's surprising to me is that nobody thought to plant new trees so that they could keep the mines going.

[@mamv80]

Perfect time for a break, pause everything and watch Dan ❤

[@raraavis7782]

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.

[@nanasdad100]

There are large flint mines

[@jfu5222]

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

[@DanDavisHistory]

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.

[@cipriantodoran1674]

​@@DanDavisHistory thx!

[@vanrensburgsgesicht]

@@DanDavisHistory Strange that they were such professionals in mining metals and precious stones back then, but never had the idea of mining coal?

[@DanDavisHistory]

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.

[@martijn9568]

​@@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.

[@jonathanwilliams1065]

It’s crazy how these people were able to develop so much without writing

[@perfectallycromulent]

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.

[@uncletiggermclaren7592]

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.

[@CatchingJeremy]

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

[@kapilchhabria1727]

Well we have headlamps now. But in West Virginia, the rituals are still all that is holding up the mine shafts…

[@raraavis7782]

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.

[@fellabay]

Fabulous! You're a star, I love your work.

[@FurryManPeach]

With all the deforestation and burning of charcoal that took place across the bronze age world for the production of bronze, it makes me wonder if this was the major contributor to the climatic upheavals that led to the final bronze age collapse

[@ronbdallas]

Very intriguing look at the Bronze Age copper trade and mining. Clearly there was massive commerce in copper and bronze in the ancient world.

[@paulwilson6511]

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.

[@RichardLucas]

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.

[@kellye.8847]

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.

[@that44rdv4rk]

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.

[@ruththinkingoutside.707]

Woo! Perfect timing.. another awesome history video!! Thank you Dan!! You’re awesome!

[@JonnoPlays]

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? 😅

[@neutronshiva2498]

I had no clue such word existed. I just assumed its shards.

[@helenamcginty4920]

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.

[@DanDavisHistory]

Sherds sherds sherds

[@postmodernmining]

​@@DanDavisHistoryyer a sherd herder.

[@petrapetrakoliou8979]

Using sherds or shards is Ok. But sherds is how archaeologists say it.

[@neutronshiva2498]

Very interesting subject, still so much more to discover. Dan never disappoints.

[@Crowhillgal]

The ingenuity of prehistoric ppls is fascinating! Thanks, Dan!

[@benmcreynolds8581]

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)

[@llanitedave]

I can only imagine the amount of trouble the balrogs would have caused in those mines.

[@4thdimensionalexplorer]

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.

[@HeerHalewijn]

Damn, the Minoans had contact with the Urals and South Asia and we know this from iron and monkeys. That's quite the radius.

[@benwinter2420]

That old trade in monkeys Watson as I relight my pipe & gaze back into the fire

[@TaraHisakata]

I love being early to these. Tell me more Dan!

[@RichardSmith-ms6hh]

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.

[@BromiumProductions1]

Thank you for another great knowledge drop!

[@PaulOJazzMusic]

I love videos like these. This knowledge is nothing but illuminating to our awesome ancient past!! Excellent video.

[@drakegod84]

Dan hitting us with a bunch of videos!

[@androgenoide]

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.

[@DanDavisHistory]

Wonderful, I didn't know that, thank you.

[@dfgyuhdd]

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.

[@_Brohan]

ancient history is so freaking cool. often i do wish i was alive then instead of now. would i have been killed by plague or something in my 20s or earlier? maybe. but, worth it tbh.

[@1_Fish.2_Fish.Red_Fish.]

The significant other I don’t have, the stranger that produces all those neat videos I like to watch dropped.

[@craig2129]

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.

[@DanDavisHistory]

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.

[@craig2129]

@@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.

[@GaudiaCertaminisGaming]

Barnack Hills and Holes is a similar site. My favourite ancient mine is Puzzle Woods. The landscape inspired Tolkien.

[@johnconnolly5292]

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.

[@jakobo88]

keep it up this is great pace... great video...

[@allauddin732]

Kar means work Galy means narrow place.

[@nonFireresist]

Great, thank you. (Commenting also to aware others...)

[@PaxAlotin]

*Hello Dan* Just discovered your channel. Your coverage of it was well presented. It has added to my knowledge regarding Copper Mining.

[@danvasii9884]

Wonderful information, thanks! Never heard before about this mining field.

[@HansFormerlyTraffer]

There were mines in Upper Michigan over 6k yrs ago that produced an estimated 500 thousand tons of copper.

[@DanDavisHistory]

No they didn't

[@lordoftherollos]

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.

[@newandoldtech5634]

Falu Koppargruva is the odest, still running company as I know of. Started late 1200, maybe 1288, but to extract copper started maybe 700 AD

[@bc7138]

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?

[@DanDavisHistory]

Maybe cyprus hadn't ramped up production yet. They only took over after 1400 BC.

[@xAlexZifko]

Maybe your clan has been trading with another clan for many generations and that's just who you continue to work with?

[@leighdee2084]

As always, wonderfully informative and entertaining video. Thanks, Dan

[@benwinter2420]

Early photo's of the Mount Wells Tin mine mill in the Northern Territory Australia . . showed all the surrounding hills stripped bare of tree's as they were used to fire the steam engines that powered the place , now you would't know as all has grown back as mill long defunct , cool place to look around still there the huge old mill , a mates old man was caretaker there a while back

[@vomact1052]

Great show. Always look forward to your new offerings!

[@code4chaosmobile]

Woohoo!! Nothing makes a day like a Dan History day! woot woot new video!

[@cherylbrooks7005]

Was just watching an old video and up pops a new one! ❤😊❤

[@alesjamsek9422]

Amazing human history of metal production.

[@VespasianJudea]

There were also copper mines in the americas around the Great Lakes.

[@stefanschneider3681]

That's so interesting! And not even that long ago ... if you think how old the earth is ...

[@DavidJohnRedwood]

Can I just clarify if someone would answer: they did all this before written records of things evolved? Thanks for another very interesting one Dan 👍.

[@emark8928]

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.

[@MrDaros89]

"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.

[@jaalsburg]

In the U.S. Michigan Upper Peninsula Keweenaw Peninsula, alot of off shoots, had so much copper 8000yrs ago they barely scraped the surface to get it. Some have theorized like bamboo in Asia it slowed metalergy development down because it was to easy to obtain. Fun concept at least.

[@tyrantkiller5388]

Do tin mines next!

[@joelkurowski7129]

Bless you, Dan.

[@casparcoaster1936]

Ive read ancient Mehrgar was started as a mining town... can't help looking at that shaft fill as looking similar to the Gobeckli tepe

[@JIMMY-THE-JEW-FROM-PHILLY]

Thanks Dan! My must read list grows with every video you release!

[@DanDavisHistory]

Thanks for watching Jimmy. Yes there's always so much to read. I'm reading about ancient pottery right now.

[@coleyboy1921]

For context the largest copper mine in the world Minera Escondida produces roughly 1 million tons of copper a year using modern machinery, munitions, and a workforce of over 2,500 persons. 150,000 tonnes excavating with what I imagine was firing, bronze excavation tools, and no proper ventilation is insanely impressive irregardless of how many decades it took to accomplish.

[@ccreel64]

I dare say they were initially looking for rock suited for stone tools when someone noticed that pretty blue rock, picked it up, and someone else used it in a firewall of rocks. When it melted they saw it was hard and potentially useful. Definitely a serendipitous find. Just speculating.

[@kevingreen3209]

YES! I was pondering the same thing.

[@SchoolforHackers]

I mean, is there any more plausible explanation? This is how we learn everything!

[@221b-l3t]

Probably grew out of iron production. Can we make iron with these weird rocks? Ohhh shiny, I like it, get more weird rocks!

[@kovona]

More likely, local conditions caused some of the exposed ore at the surface to undergo reduction into native copper and hinting the presence of orebodies - as was the case in Cyprus where acidic sap runoff from overhead conifer trees promoted the formation of native copper from surface copper hydroxides. Due to the intense temperature required to smelt copper ores, the discovery of copper refining is likely a result of copper mineral glazes or decor being used in pottery, as pottery kilns can create the needed high temperatures and reducing atmosphere needed to smelt copper ore.

[@kovona]

More likely, local conditions caused some of the exposed ore at the surface to undergo reduction into native copper and hinting the presence of orebodies - as was the case in Cyprus where acidic sap runoff from overhead conifer trees promoted the formation of native copper from surface copper hydroxides. Due to the intense temperature required to smelt copper ores (hotter than most campfires), the discovery of copper refining is likely a result of copper mineral glazes or decor being applied to pottery before firing, as pottery kilns can create the needed high temperatures and reducing atmosphere needed to smelt copper ore.

[@swordskillz1]

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.

[@DanDavisHistory]

That's just made up. Look up the Old Copper Culture

[@muffinperson236]

Dan strikes me as a Blood Angels collector.

[@neutronshiva2498]

Would be awesome to have some prehistory, bronze age themed Space Marines.

[@christianfrommuslim]

Eric Cline's book "1177 B.C." and his many KZbin videos on the topic really fleshes out the collapse of the Bronze Age civilization, beyond simply blaming the Sea Peoples, as they did when I was in university.

[@papamikiri]

Always a great notification to get on my phone, thank you for your great work!

[@MrKoffeeKup]

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.

[@Zaeyrus]

Just started, great topic, please! do a video on tin mining and trade in the bronze age. Tin, an incredibly scarce ore and a vital component for the creation of bronze and therefore the Bronze age

[@DanDavisHistory]

Yeah it's hard for archeologists to find and trace prehistoric tin and tin extraction and processing, much harder than gold and copper. But it's on the video list, it'll happen eventually.

[@Zaeyrus]

@@DanDavisHistory great, can't wait! But, isn't it amazing that such a scarce mineral made such a huge impact? I'd argue that because of the technological advancements of people from those time compared to us today, the Bronze age was a much more trade connected World with "better" trade compared to us.

[@fmac6441]

10:25 you should see photos and vídeos about “Serra pelada” a gold mine, north of Brasil. Ir was a human ant colony

[@cynthiarowley719]

Is it silly to think that the patterns associated with this culture could represent rivers, mountains and mine shafts? 😊

[@DanDavisHistory]

Not silly at all. Could be. I think the crosses on their gold discs are probably spoked wheels / sun wheels related to the sun chariot or something like that. But their pottery motifs developed out of earlier designs from the steppe / forest-steppe societies. One of their designs was the triskelion. It became quite widespread motif in eastern / central europe and even Mycenaean Greece, maybe spread across the Black Sea by trade networks. A fascinating society.

[@kateapple1]

From the thumbnail, I thought you were talking about that underground cave system in Turkey, the one that the guy found beyond the wall of his house? There’s a theory that the pyramids are actually just mine tailings…. And I’ve always wondered if those underground cave systems are actually just parts of early mines!

[@arturillosmeriglia8029]

Damn, title actually wasn't clickbait! Pleasantly surprised :) great video!

[@ronisilva4477]

Cool,thanks for your job,salutes from Brazil ❤

[@nancybryson5488]

What a great video! I learned so much. Thank you.

[@billwaterson9492]

Lidar is changing history

[@nothankyou3853]

amazing work

[@augustbutler9096]

Very interesting

[@SunnySalasar]

Insane how they excavated over 250 million cubic meters of dirt to get those 150.000 tons of ore.

[@danyelnicholas]

…another fascinating site I had (frankly) never heard of. Thank you! - Is it possible that the steppe was actually forrest before they started smelting those gigantic amounts of copper? Did these people « create » the steppe?

[@DanDavisHistory]

No, the steppe was already grassland. The trees were in river valleys and the forest-steppe zone to the north

[@KevinSmith-yh6tl]

Absolutely wonderful information. Thank You,Sir.

[@dumdidumdumification]

Thanks for the book links

[@thejontao]

This was great! I didn’t know anything about copper mining that far east. Plus, I have a weird thing for caves, so it was doubly great!! Regarding the other component of bronze: tin (let’s forget about arsenic for now)… I’ve recently started wondering if Cornish people had started mining tin for jewelry… and when the Mediterranean peoples realized that the tin they needed for bronze was found in Cornwall, they started trading with the Cornish miners… which would have brought considerable wealth to the area and possibly fueled the building of things like large stone monuments, maybe stone circles, in Britain. Now, as far as I know, there is no archaeological evidence in Britain of Mediterranean goods from the Bronze Age… so this is just a fantasy in my head… but the dates all pretty much line up. Even if it didn’t happen, it makes for an interesting story… just imagine if the human manpower that was required for Stonehenge and other monuments was a result of an economic boom caused by the Bronze Age tin trade…

[@DanDavisHistory]

Thank you. No that's not how it happened. The transition from arsenical copper to bronze happened in Britain from about 2200 BC, centuries before most of the rest of Europe. Probably because of the tin in southwest Britain, yes. Other tin sources are found in western and central Europe. But the British tin was nothing to do with Mediterranean people, at least not directly. Tracing tin sources is incredibly different however. Also, Stonehenge was built and rebuilt before the tin mining era in Britain.

[@thejontao]

@ Great info, thanks! :-)

[@briananderson687]

Brilliant as always! thank you!

[@KatherineHugs]

Yes!! Thanks Dan, great content as always!!

[@robbabcock_]

Thanks for a remarkable and fascinating video! ⛏🔥⚒

[@richardglady3009]

Thank you for this video. It is a very interesting story.

[@johnpublic168]

Up state michgan had huge copper mine

[@erichtomanek4739]

Excellent video. Very informative and visually appealing. Where did they get the Tin from? Afghanistan?

[@mudgetheexpendable]

This story reminds me of TRAM 83 by Mujila, because of the mining boomtown facet.

[@scallopohare9431]

Staggering, just staggering!

[@holgernarrog962]

My first question is why there is no copper mining anymore today. Usually where you find some copper close to the surface there is more copper close to it or deeper. Usually today copper grades of 0,5% are profitable while it was far too less in Bronze age.

[@StarlitSeafoam]

Wow, insane and so fascinating!

[@lu9680]

Great video as always!

[@Zozo-sc1ps]

The fact that simply going underground for a short time was completely taboo in some cultures for religious reasons, I could believe that they had rituals to cleanse themselves after or before coming out of the mine, it makes sense that they’d be worried not just about natural dangers but supernatural ones too

[@babbalonian2]

Do the mysterious Lake Superior Prehistoric Copper Mine's next....

[@jezusbloodie]

I'm mind boggled, perhaps even gobsmacked