Name: The Largest Prehistoric Copper Mine in the World
Uploaded: 2024-12-05T05:18:37.000Z
Duration: 15 min 3 s
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There were many productive copper mines throughout Bronze Age Europe.

There were mines along the Atlantic coasts from Ireland and Britain down to Brittany and Iberia.

One of the most famous and most productive was the incredible Great Orme mine on the north coast of Wales.

This mine was so large that it produced perhaps 2,000 tonnes of copper, enough to transform the British Isles and make its rulers extremely wealthy.

In Central Europe, the mines of the Eastern Alps were even more productive.

The richest mine of all there produced an estimated 20,000 tonnes of copper, which would have been enough to produce staggering numbers of swords, shields and armour.

In Southern Europe, from the Balkans to the Aegean Islands and across to Anatolia, there were mines producing copper that fuelled the ancient civilisations of the Near East.

The island of Cyprus was famous for its production, extracting and exporting its ingots to Egypt and Mesopotamia and right across Europe.

But none of these were as large or as productive as a mining complex here at the furthest reaches of Europe on the steppes between the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea.

Almost 4,000 years ago, massive mining works completely transformed the landscape.

They dug vast numbers of vertical shafts into the bedrock and then chased the veins of ore by digging a staggering network of interlinked tunnels, extending for hundreds of kilometres.

Their excavations were so extensive that experts estimate they produced up to a staggering 150,000 tonnes of copper during the Bronze Age.

But what society was conducting operations of this scale out here on the steppe?

How did they find these ore deposits so long ago?

Where did the miners live and how did they carry out these works?

This is the story of what ancient mining experts have called the largest prehistoric copper mine in the world, the incredible Mines of Kargali.

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This enormous mining centre is found on the open-step landscape of the Southern Urals, in what's Russia today.

There are copper deposits spread over about 500 square kilometres along the valley of the river Kargalka, a tributary of the Ural River.

This region was first exploited for its copper in the Early Bronze Age.

There was a settlement 70 kilometres to the west, dated to 3800 to 3360 BC, associated with the Repin culture.

The Repin culture was actually an early Yamnaya culture, ceramic style, unique to this region.

Excavations of the settlement revealed Kargali copper ore, slag and copper tools.

They mined at Kargali, then brought the copper here for processing in the summers.

And activity at the Kargali site itself was carried out by the Yamnaya culture after about 3000 BC.

The Yamnaya were mobile herders, but they were also metal workers, extracting ore and making copper axes and knives.

Their presence at Kargali is attested by the burial mounds they built in the area.

Excavation of one of these cemeteries revealed the burial of a young man dated to about 2900 to 2700 BC, who was interred with grave goods including a valuable copper axe and an axe mould, perhaps evidence that he had been a metal worker in life.

But the Yamnaya mining at Kargali seems to have stopped after 2500 BC.

It did not start up again until 1900 BC, when it continued for perhaps 6 centuries until around 1300 BC.

This phase of mining was carried out by the Shrubnaya culture.

They were steppe herders too, but they also had many settlements throughout the Pontic steppe, from the Urals to the Black Sea coasts.

Their ancestors had been mining elsewhere in the southern Urals for centuries, and societies like the Sintashta culture to the north east had also become mining and copper working experts.

Copper was necessary for these societies to function, and those who controlled copper sources could become enormously wealthy and powerful.

You have to wonder how those Yamnaya people first discovered the copper mineral ores in the Kargali region.

When we think of mining, we automatically think of rocks and mountains, and certainly that's where most copper ores were discovered in prehistory.

These ancient prospectors would see hints of the blue, green, malachite or azurite ores in outcrops, and so have an idea about where to begin excavations.

But out here on the steppes, the bedrock is covered by many metres of earth.

However, it's likely small regions of bedrock jutted up close to the surface here and there on the steppes and in the river valleys.

The Yamnaya and later Shrubnaya prospectors would have spotted the blue-green minerals and followed the veins down into the earth.

Apparently, modern people have noticed that certain types of vegetation favour certain copper-rich environments.

It's just speculation, but perhaps spotting copper-loving plants growing helped them to find these deposits too.

It took a huge amount of labour to even begin ore extraction at Kargali.

The ores are embedded in sandstone beneath the alluvial soils at depths of up to 12 metres.

The ore deposits extend another 90 metres below the surface of the bedrock.

So the miners would excavate huge amounts of earth to find ore-bearing sandstones beneath.

Once they found ore, they dug vertical or inclined shafts 10 to 12 metres down.

Amazingly, when archaeologists discovered and excavated these shafts, they found handholds dug into the rock.

Imagine climbing up and down these circular shafts in and out of the mine 3 and a half thousand years ago.

Once they dug down into it, they began tunnelling outwards, following the ore in every direction, often down to depths of 40 metres.

The sandstone was soft, which made the work easier than at some other mines, and yet the tunnels were therefore more prone to collapse.

Where they struck it rich, the tunnel systems became extensive, excavating underground chambers up to 20 metres or 65 feet high.

These networks of tunnels often connected to one another, creating a labyrinth of several hundred kilometres beneath the surface.

The many exploratory workings left the landscape forever pitted with craters.

The copper mines at Kargali cover an area around 140 square kilometres, with an estimated 35,000 surface features connected to mining, with thousands of mineshafts, drift mines, prospecting pits and the underground tunnels.

The soft rock here meant they could excavate with the same kinds of tools they used 4,000 kilometres away in North Wales at the Great Orme mine.

Antler and bone picks made from cattle bones, cattle shoulder blades for shovels, and large stone hammers.

Also like at the Great Orme, they manufactured and used bronze picks too.

Not only do they find the tools here, they can see evidence of their use still etched into the walls of the mines today.

So what did they do with all the ore they extracted?

What impact did this industrial scale activity have on the environment?

Archaeologists have discovered around 20 settlements connected to the late Bronze Age mines at

The most well excavated one, called Gourney, is located on a low hill inside the mining complex.

Initially, when the settlement was founded, there were pit dwellings occupied only seasonally.

But over time, they established permanent houses, along with smelting facilities and ritual areas.

Archaeologists only excavated part of the settlement of course, but they found 120,000 sherds of pottery from perhaps 6,000 pottery vessels.

Then they recovered about 2.5 million animal bones, mostly cattle.

They also found 4,000 finds of copper, from raw copper to ingots and finished metalwork, along with 190 casting moulds for the production of axes and daggers and copper picks for the mines.

They carried out the initial stages of copper production here by crushing the ores with hammer stones and sorting out the minerals for smelting.

And although some smelting was done here, it seems a lot of the ore was shipped off for smelting further south and west, where there was more wood for fuel.

A 1kg ingot of copper required the burning of 65kg of charcoal, which was obtained from about 500kg of dry wood.

Considering the scale of the extraction here, experts estimate that 75 million metric tons of wood were consumed.

This used up all the local wood in the region, requiring the ore export for further processing.

It's been theorised that the wood supply problem was what ended production here, rather than running out of copper.

This Bronze Age Shrobnaya settlement at Gourney really fires my imagination.

Imagine living in the middle of that Bronze Age industrial zone.

It must have been something like a boom town in the Old West, or more likely one of those horrendous cobalt mines in the Congo or Uganda, where they extract the minerals needed for the batteries in our phones and cars.

I imagine the Bronze Age settlement had rulers and overseers, skilled workers and slaves, and the people supplying all their needs.

Excavations also revealed features interpreted as ritual sites or ritual activities.

There may have been mass sacrifices of cattle for enormous feasts.

There were so many cattle in fact, that some speculate they were brought in for trade as a form of payment, rather than just food.

Many pits in the settlement seem to have ritual deposits inside, and there were many stone objects, interpreted as phalluses, inserted into the ground.

I know there's this idea that any time an archaeologist can't work something out, they just call it ritual.

But this kind of ritual activity is common in ancient mines.

It's obviously a very dangerous activity, and one that involves going down into the earth, into the darkness, being enveloped by it, being separated from the normal world on the surface.