Some 5,000 years ago, silver mining on the shores of the Aegean Sea

Eurekalert! ^ | February 10, 2016 | Ghent University

[SunkenCiv]

Underground, the morphology and the organization of the mining infrastructure allow to distinguish several phases of activity.

The archaeological data gathered and observed during the latest phase of the 2015 campaign: pottery, stone hammers made of a volcano-sedimentary rock quarry, point towards a high dating for the earliest phase of mining activities in the area (Late Neolithic / Early Helladic: around 3200 BC). If future research confirms this hypothesis, the chronological framework of mining in the region of Attica and the Aegean world would be profoundly modified. The Classical phase is by far the most perceptible; omnipresent, it is remarkable by the regularity of the sections of divided galleries that cover the whole space. Fragments of pottery and oil lamps, and even a Greek inscription engraved on a wall, testify to the activities in this period. Conduits cut with pointed tools, of quadrangular shape, cutting of the rock in successive stages, such are the characteristics of these particularly well organized mining works.

This resumption of the works at the end of Classical period (4th century BC) is dated by the tool marks in the galleries and the ceramic remains. Shafts discovered inside this network connect two main levels of mineralization's, and hence of extraction. Of perfect geometrical architecture, executed to the millimeter, their technique of construction is still investigated by the archaeologists.

Today, these shafts are only accessible using techniques of alpine caving. A certain number of these abandoned galleries has remained untouched over the last 5000 years. Others, which are now inaccessible, had been entirely banked up during successive phases of mining. Progressing in these galleries remains difficult for the experienced archaeologists, wearing high-tech equipment, in a stifling atmosphere with temperatures up to 21°C.

[SunkenCiv]

A mining archaeologist is at work in a 5,000 year old silver mine in Thorikos, Greece. [image credit: Ghent University]

[SunkenCiv]

A silver strike made Athens rich, and bankrolled the construction of the fleet they used to defeat the Persians at Salamis.

[Rust Buster]

... and Athens, instead of becoming a colony of Persia or the estern boundary of the Persian Empire, became the Athens that became the engine of the modern west -

Perhaps the trajectory of freedom set in motion by this silver mine - in so far as the soldiers in Themistocles’ command received their pay from it - continued in its way all the way to the founding of America

Herodotus, whose History’s subject is the Persian Wars, made it clear that - in the same way that the un-reciproal enmity between the two sides of the Aegean had existed since time immemorial in his own time, so to would it continue - perhaps forever

Un-reciprocal - he introduces his history with the premise of the Persian Wars being unexplainable enmity directed at the west from the people on east side of the Aegean - enmity perhaps institutionalized in the cultural blueprint of the people east of the Aegean - an enmity not reciprocated by the west

Yet the west would fall under attack perhaps forever so long by way of this dynamic

Themistocles saved the west in the Battle of Salamis

And the West is still fighting the Persian Wars til today

[ckilmer]

Similiarly, Mexican and Andean silver mines bankrolled spain for two centuries.

Gold strikes also bankrolled Muhhammed.

The roman defeat of the Thracians bankrolled Rome with Thracian gold for much 2nd century AD.

There are probably other examples around.

The US government has 8 tones of gold in storage. In the 1940 & 50’s the US government had 20 tons of gold in storage. The US went off the gold standard in 72 because of the hemmorage of US gold to back the dollar.

The Chinese are currently rapidly building up their gold deposits.

[SunkenCiv]

[bert]

searching for headache medicine