Historical Mining in the EB Era

[Laundreu]

Having given a glance or three or maybe ten to the Resources preview, a question occured to me; what were the mine yields like back in Europa Barbarorum's era? How much gold, silver, iron, etc could be torn from the earth in a year? In these modern days we tend to think of this as many tons in a single year, but I somehow doubt this is the case in, say, 272 BCE in Greece. What sources are used to get these numbers, if in fact they exist? I've not found any but then I've not had a chance to give my local college library a hard looking-through. Any help/information/guidance/lollipops would be appreciated muchly!

Especially the lollipops. Mmm...

[Zaknafien]

classical quarrying and general mining operations was really quite robust, through standard manual digging and some methods of stripping as well. The returns would not be anywhere near modern, but its all relative to the amount of currency in circulation at the time and the percieved wealth of the little returns that did surface.

[eadingas]

Hmm Qwerty had access to quite detailed sources about output of greek mines that we used as basis for our entire economy system... I don't remember much of those now, though...

[QwertyMIDX]

The mines in the Laurion area in attica produced about 1000 talents a year (about 26,000kg) in the 5th century. By the standards of the mining during EB's period that would have a considered a largish mid-sized mine.

[Jarardo]

[Laundreu]

Huh. That is a lot of gold! Enough to pay for 16,000+ Hellenic mercenaries for a year. (6,000 drachmae to a talent gives you 6,000,000 drachmai. 1 drachma a day per mercenary gives 365~ drachmai a year. You can pay that roughly 16,438 times over. With a wee bit left over.)

[QwertyMIDX]

Well the mines at Laurion produced silver, but yeah it was quite a bit. It's about 75 drachma per citizen with a high estimate of that population group (at its hieght). Add on the tribute money Athens was extroting from her "allies" and you can figure out how they paided people to come to assemblies and sit on juries and how they built all the now legendary civic buildings.

[O'ETAIPOS]

And, do not forget they used it to build, and maintain around 200 triremes.

[QwertyMIDX]

Yeah, although those were mostly paid for by wealthy athenians (either individual or in small groups). They also paid for lots of the public festivites in Athens like hiring choruses to sign and the like. It was sort of an unoffical 'tax the rich' system.

[Zaknafien]

The Romans took mining to a level not rivaled until the Industrial Revolution in Iberia. The silver mines annexed from Carthage were handed over to the publicani in the 2nd century BC, and with those a single mine might have tunnels that stretched more than a hundred square miles, and provide upwards of 40,000 slaves with a living death. Writers wrote of the pall of smog that hung over the landscape from the smelters and giant chimneys.

Measurements of lead in the ice of Greenland's glaciers show a staggering increase in concentration during this period, bearing witness to the volumes of smoke produces by the ore mines.

Experts have estimated that for every ton of silver being gorged out of the earth, over ten thousand tons of rock had to be excevated---it has also been estimated, that by the early 1st century BC, the Roman mints were using fifty tons of silver each year.

[QwertyMIDX]

I forget where it is but one roman writer mentions birds dying when they flew into the smog clouds over the Iberian smelters.