Perhaps you think miners are neandrathals. In some cases you would be right. Mining goes WAY back. 7,000 BC stuff you should be able to find in the Langridge's Catalogue.
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"Over the past two years, mostly on the evolution reflector, I have presented evidence for behaviors among the ancient hominids which would be considered quite human if it were found today. These data include the earliest art object, a Venus figurine, the Berekhat Ram figurine, which dates to 300,000 years ago. (Morris, 1994, p 186-188), the wooden plank with polish made by either archaic Homo sapiens or Homo erectus, (Belitsky et al, 1991), evidence for the tanning of hides from 1 million years ago (Johanson et al, 1994, p. 163-165; Klein 1989, pp 113-117), warfare or murder among the Neandertal approximately 48,000 years ago (Solecki, 1992, p. 211), and the Australian art dated at 75,000 years ago, which implies boat-building (required to reach Australia) from that remote time. Tonight I am reporting on one of the most complex behaviors yet--subterranean mining. Technically speaking, mining goes back to the appearance of the first flint tools around 2.5 million years ago (Semaw, 1997; Walker and Shipman, 1996, p 176). The collection of cobbles with which to make stone tools is a form of surface mining. Surface mining of this form has occurred continuously since that time for a variety of products. Crystalline rocks suitable for tool manufacture have been continuously mined. The technological expertise of the ancient miners, even in surface mining, is quite intriguing. Mellars (1996, p. 265) writes:
"Turq describes one such major site from this region - that of Lascabannes, located immediately adjacent to a rich flint source on the Senonian outcrop in Lot-et-Garonne. The assemblage is characterized predominantly by a concentration of flint nodules, most of which exhibit signs of deliberate scratching or scoring of the surface (to assess the quality of the flint) followed by preliminary testing of the nodules by occasional flake removals, or more systematic removal of outer (cortical) flakes to reduce the weight of the nodules for transportation from the site. An apparent example of a similar extraction site has been reported briefly by Geneste from the site of Campsegret in the Bergerac region, but has not yet been described in any detail."
The testing of the nodules for quality would seem to mimic what modern geologists do when acquiring raw material of any sort. Quality control is always an important consideration. I have recently become aware of how widespread is the evidence for subsurface mining. Bednarik (1992) describes several subterranean mining sites from the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. These include mining from caves as well as the digging of shafts to reach buried raw material. He further discusses the cognitive abilities required to engage in subterranean mining.
Nazlet Khater 4 is a site in Upper Egypt between Asyut and Sohag, which dates from between 35,100 to 30,360 years BP. A layer of greenish silts and sands is overlain by a chert-rich layer of Nile gravel. Above this level were three layers containing no chert. The chert-rich layer could be seen in outcrop (place where the rock comes to the surface). These miners apparently had the geological understanding to predict where the flint rich layer would go. They dug a 9-m long, 2-m wide trench as well as 7 vertical shafts to reach the flint layer. This would mean hours of work digging through layers which contained no flint in order to reach the prized flint. What is even more amazing, is what Bednarik (1992, p. 13) says about the miners.
"Some information has been recovered about the people responsible for the quarrying. Numerous lithic artefacts were fashioned from the chert cobbles of the substratum, and they include blades and bifacially trimmed axes. On the summit of a boulder hill 400 m to the north-west, at Nazlet Khater 2 site, two graves were discovered. One contained the outstretched remains of a human, probably a sub-adult male, the other was of a human foetus. The former had been covered with loose aeolian sand and several boulders, some exceeding 0.4 m in diameter. Next to the cranium (an archaic Homo sapiens, op. cit. Fig. 9), a 12 cm-long axe head was found in the grave fill, possessing concave sides for hafting, and matching the axe heads at the nearby mining site in every respect."
According to the definition of archaic Homo sapiens, the miners are not anatomically modern humans (Churchill et al, 1996, p231)!
Could this mining be the result of ancient, Egyptian Dynastic miners? No. The axes found with the miners are not the same type as those found in Dynastic times. Dynastic age graves always bury the body in a contracted position, yet in the burial found at Nazlet Khater 4 the man is laid out in an extended position. And finally, there are no archaic Homo sapiens in ancient Egypt.
But mining in the Nile Valley goes even further back in time. Vermeersch and Paulissen report on four other sites, Qena and Nazlet Safaha, dating to 50,000 years ago, and Nazlet Khater-2 and Beit Allam, which date to 60,000 years ago (Vermeersch and Paulissen, 1989, p. 36). All of these sites were flint quarries.
At Lion Cave in Swaziland, ancient miners cut a tunnel 25 feet wide, 30 feet deep, and 20 ft high. This tunnel was cut into a cliff face 500 feet tall. This is apparently the oldest known mining operation. The activity has been securely dated to go back at least 43,000 years by carbon 14 and probably goes back even further to 70-110,000 years ago.(Dart and Beaumont, 1971, p. 10; Bednarik, 1992, p. 15; Dart and Beaumont, 1967; Vermeersch and Paulissen, 1989, p. 36). Apparently, the mining was terminated when a 5-ton boulder fell from the roof of the tunnel and blocked the entrance. (Dart and Beaumont, 1967, p. 408)
In the case of this mine, it is even known where the ancient miners "mined" their tools. Dart and Beaumont (1967,p. 408) write:
"Quartz, white quartzites, grey and white dappled quartzite, black indurated shales and greenish cherts were the principal materials used by the miners. These rock types occur mostly on a ridge overlooked by, and about 0.25 miles from, the cavern. The exposures there are patently flaked. Dappled grey and white quartzite exposures occur about a mile and more northwest of the site."
Since some like Hugh Ross (1995b) believe that archaic humans were merely an intelligent mammalian species, like the primates, it is important to realize that there are significant differences between what we know from activities at Lion Cave and the activities of chimpanzees. The distance the mining tools were carried is, by far, a greater distance than chimpanzees carry tools. Boesch and Boesch (1984, p. 162) tabulate the distances tools were carried by chimpanzees to crack open nuts to obtain food. 96 percent of the tools were obtained within 200 m of the nut tree. In the mining case, the miners had to have in mind the red ochre back at Lion Cavern a quarter mile away while they spent time manufacturing tools appropriate to the task of breaking the hard, hematite ore. Then they had to remember the ore while they hauled the newly made tools back to the mine for use. And when the tool broke and a new one was required, the miner must remember where the tool mine was, travel there with the idea in mind to make a new tool. In contrast, chimpanzees may remember where rocks suitable for cracking nuts are, but they do not travel so far nor engage in such complex behavior in order to fashion the tool. (In the case of nut cracking, they engage in absolutely no manufacturing work but use the stones as they are found).
The interesting thing about this mine is what was being mined. The ancient peoples were not mining flint, which would be considered useful for obtaining food. Lion cave is a pigment mine. They were mining red ochre, a pigment used by primitive peoples as body paint for their rituals. The amount of material moved is quite impressive. In the literature, I have heard estimates of 50-100 tons. But if the entire cavern carved out by the miners was hematite, I calculate that nearly 2700 tons of material was removed from this site. This is an incredible amount of material for paleolithic man to have removed from the site. Obviously, red ochre was an important item. What was it used for?
(Editor's note:Probably signalling material to hail passing space craft)
Dickson gives a history of the use of red ochre. He writes (Dickson, 1990, pp 42-43):
"Specimens of ochre have been reported from some of the oldest occupation or activity sites known from the Lower Paleolithic period in the Old World, including Bed II at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Ambrona in Spain, Terra Amata in France, and Becov in Czechoslovakia. The use of ochre apparently increases during the Middle Paleolithic period in the Mousterian tradition and becomes common in the Upper Paleolithic period. "Ochre has no apparent practical or technological use until the development of iron metallurgy sometime in the second millennium before Christ when it becomes a principal ore for iron smelting. Nonetheless, many of the Paleolithic period ochre specimens show evidence of having been worked or utilized in some fashion. For example, the two lumps of ochre recovered at Olduvai Gorge show signs of having been struck directly by hammerstone blows (M. Leakey 1971). Howell (1965:129) states that the ochre specimen recovered at Ambrona showed evidence of shaping and trimming, although Butzer (1980:635) asserts this may only be natural cleavage. Still the ochre comes from the same horizon as the famous linear arrangement of elephant tusks and bones and was probably brought to the site by the hominids who are thought to have killed and butchered elephants there. "At Terra Amata, which was occupied around 300,000 B.P., de Lumley (1969:49) reports a number of ochre specimens recovered from the two occupation layers associated with the pole structures uncovered at the site. Specimens of red, yellow, and brown were recovered and the range of color variations suggests the ochre may have been heated. De Lumley also reports that the ends of some of the specimens were worn smooth suggesting they had been used in body painting. "Clearer evidence of ochre use comes from Becov in Czechoslovakia. This cave site, occupied ca.250,000 B. P., yielded a specimen of red ochre that was striated on two faces with marks of abrasion together with a flat rubbing stone with a granular crystalline surface that had been abraded in the center possibly during the preparation of ochre powder (Marshack 1981: 138). Whether or not the rubbing stone was actually used in the preparation of ochre powder is uncertain, but a wide area of the occupation floor from which the ochre lump had been recovered was stained with red ochre powder."
Why was pigment so important to people 70-80,000 and years ago that they would begin the massive mining operation? Why would they heat it to alter its color as Dickson suggests? If archaic Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Homo erectus were simply intelligent mammals lacking a religion (as Hugh Ross suggests [Ross, 1991, p. 159-160; 1995, p. 2]) then why all the interest in carrying around useless ochre? There can only be one reason. Since ochre (mineral: specularite, Fe2O3) can not be eaten nor used for any utilitarian purpose in a primitive society, art and ritual are the only remaining possibilities. The active mining of ochre for the past 80,000 years is highly indicative of a religious or spiritual sense for that entire time. The occurrence of ochre in Homo erectus sites as far back as 1.5 million years ago, would also argue for ritual among them. This red ochre mine is highly indicative of the ritual and spiritual lives of those who lived between 50 and 100 thousand years ago.
But this may not be the earliest evidence of a desire for pigment. The earliest evidence of a red pigment, a weathered basalt which when rubbed produces red powder, came from Bed II at Olduvai, dated at 1.7 million years ago (Oakley, 1981, p. 206-207)
Neanderthals, by everyone's admission, used ochre and manganese dioxide (a black pigment) to color something. Mellars (1996,p. 370) writes:
"The occurrence of what are almost certainly colouring materials in Middle Palaeolithic contexts is now beyond dispute. The evidence comes in two main forms: first fragments of iron oxide or red ochre which, depending on the source, can provide a range of colours from yellow to deep maroon or red-brown; and black manganese dioxide. Fragments of ochre have now been recorded from at least a dozen different Middle Palaeolithic sites in southwestern France, while the occurrence of manganese dioxide is even more frequent. Evidence that the materials were used as pigments seems difficult to dispute Many individual fragments show either clear signs of scraping (presumably to yield a powder) or well developed facets on one or more surfaces which suggest that they were applied directly to a hard or soft surface."
With all this use for ochre, it is not surprising to find evidence for mining.
But there is also evidence for flint mining from ancient times.
One cave site in Europe, Bara Bahau, France, shows evidence of pre-upper Paleolithic mining on the walls of the cave. The cave overlooks the Vezere River, and throughout the region there are numerous exposures of chert which show many signs of quarrying. It would be logical to look in the cave for other outcrops of the flint seam. Examination of the walls of the cave reveal the following sequence of events. First the cherts were mined; many of the cherts left in the wall show evidence of having been hammered in the extraction process. After this there is evidence of finger marks and cave bear claw marks on the wall. Finally, someone painted a pictures of horses, cows, felines bears and cervids on the soft limestone walls above and below the flint. In the process of painting, the fractured flint was incorporated as parts of the eyes, ears or hooves of the animals. There is no further evidence of damage (which mining would cause) to the soft limestone walls. If the mining of the flint had occurred AFTER the painting, the paintings would have been damaged, but they weren't. The paintings cover the evidence of the mining. What age are the pictures? Bednarik, 1992, p. 14 says,
"The mining evidence is most likely of the early Upper Palaeolithic or of the Mousterian (Mousterian occupation evidence is present in the cave). "
The Mousterian is the culture which has clearly been demonstrated to belong to the Neanderthal. Interestingly, one can not say that this mining is definitely due to modern humans even if it were early Upper Paleolithic. As Smith, (1991, p. 224) notes, no modern human fossils have ever been found with the early Upper Paleolithic tools, in spite of a century and a half of searching. The early Aurignacian (Upper Paleolithic) occurs in deposits dated to 35,000 years and greater. Clearly mankind was mining from cave walls prior to the occurrence of the first anatomically modern human in SW France. Modern man is not found in France until 5,000 years later than the artwork. Modern man did not appear in France until 28-30,000 years ago. (Smith, 1991, p. 223) In eastern Europe, the evidence for mining goes even further back in time. Gabori-Csank has reported chert mining from a cave in Hungary in which Mousterian (Neandertal-style) pickaxes were found! Mousterian tools in Europe are always associated with Neanderthals and date prior to 40,000 years B.P. Thus, Neanderthal engaged in subterranean mining. (Gabori-Csank, 1988)
Bednarik (1992, p. 20-21) summarizes the technological and cognitive requirements for subterranean mining.
"Underground mining involves quite a number of both technological and cognitive pre-conditions. To begin with, it requires a preparedness to enter an alien environment which most animal species avoid, or the behavioural flexibility to manage a perhaps genetically determined cortical response pattern to fear of caves. This already provides considerable insights into the level of conscious decision making required in this context. Next, most of the underground work presupposes the availability of artificial lighting, and there is some evidence of lamps and torches having been involved in these quests. It is also obvious from several of the sites that the mining activities must have been team work, involving at least two or three people, who no doubt had to co-ordinate various aspects of their efforts. We know that a variety of mining tools were involved, and we can assume that items such as pointed, perhaps fire-hardened wooden wedges were prepared outside the cave. At a few sites there is evidence of the use of scaffolding, which would imply even more planning. These observations together suggest that fairly complex planning patterns need to be postulated. Finally, some of the caves are of quite difficult access, and the sheer logistics of the mining operations conducted in them must have involved engineering skills of an order of magnitude few archaeologists would be currently prepared to credit any 'pre-Upper Palaeolithic' people with. Not only does the evidence for these abilities permit considerably more insight into the cognitive, intellectual, social and, presumably, linguistic skills of the people concerned than the futile and yet perennial arguments about language ability, the hyoid bone and Broca's area, there is still another factor to be considered. "I began this paper by explaining, in some detail the diagenetic conditions in which sedimentary silicas form, and why they occur primarily as tabular or quasi-tabular deposits. The geological reasons for this are known to us, and we can broadly explain the processes involved. But we have no reason to assume that the early miners were capable of rationalizing about these deposits in quite the same way. Yet the evidence seems to suggest, in some cases, that they were capable of predicting the occurrence and spatial extent of an as yet concealed geological feature. While it may be cognitively easy to follow an exposed seam, it is quite a different matter to undertake a calculated course of action that promises no immediate reward, and whose eventual reward is based entirely on the validity of an abstract prediction. Consider the procedure depicted in Figure 5: once the seam became inaccessible to methods of minimal labour input, a decision was made to remove the massive limestone overburden above the seam. This would have involved hours of back-breaking and most unpleasant work, without any guarantee of a reward- were it not for the expectation that the seam would in fact continue inwards. If it did not, the entire work effort would have been in vain. This implies that the miners were reasonably certain that the seam would continue horizontally. In other words they had the intellectual and cognitive capacity of observing and understanding a geological formation such as a tabular deposit: and they were capable of making an informed prediction with a sufficient degree of conviction to warrant the determined labour expenditure which we find documented."
One should also be aware that Neanderthals are found in rocks dated from 30,000 to 230,000 years ago. If they were capable of mining, then humanity must extend back that far. In the case of archaic Homo sapiens, they go back 500,000 years ago, requiring that humanity extend back that far. Behaviors of this complexity (subterranean mining) are only engaged in by man. There is NO animal example. Apologists who believe that Adam was a recent (Upper Paleolithic <35,000 years BP) anatomically modern human creation, ignore the data for subsurface mining in more "primitive" hominids, such as Neanderthal and archaic Homo sapiens. Such views are contrary to the scientific and theological data available to anyone who wishes to do the proper research. Since there could not be 3 Adams (a Neanderthal Adam, an Archaic Homo sapiens Adam, and an anatomically modern Adam), one must incorporate beings with this type of human activity (Neanderthal and archaic Homo sapiens) into theologically defined man - a being with the image of God.
Behaviors such as I have described here is most certainly NOT incipient human behavior--it is FULLY human. Christians need to realize that when we teach our children that fossil man was mere ape-man, not really human, we are going against the actual evidence of quite human behavior far into the past. This sets our children up for difficulties if and when they ever learn what we have ignored. When apologists make the easy claim that there is no evidence of human behavior from fossil man, they betray the fact that they have not really looked at the available evidence.
Christians should also consider the possibility that my views just might be correct, i.e., that Adam and the Flood were millions of years ago."
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