Mining (Flint, Copper, Coal)
Digging stone, ore and coal out of the ground is where metals and fuels begin: miners cut shafts for copper by 5000 BC, and pumping deep mines dry led to the first steam engines.
Open in the interactive tree →The oldest known mine, Ngwenya in Eswatini, supplied red ochre about 41,000-43,000 years ago; Neolithic flint mines such as Grimes Graves (about 2600-2300 BC, shafts over 14 m deep, dug with deer-antler picks) followed, and at Rudna Glava in Serbia miners cut shafts into a hillside for copper ore in the 5th millennium BC. Where rock was hard they heated it with fire and quenched it with water to crack it, and as shafts went deeper flooding became the limit: Newcomen's engine of 1712 was built to pump water out of coal mines. Ore and coal from mines became the raw material of metals and the fuel of the Industrial Revolution, and lithium, cobalt and rare earths still come from mines today.
Prerequisites
- Stone Tools~3.3 million years agoStone and antler picks broke the rock
- Mastering Fire~1.8 million-400,000 years agoFire-setting: heated rock cracks when quenched with water
Unlocks
- Metallurgy (Bronze, Iron)~2500 BCSmelting needs ore dug out of the ground; early copper mines supplied it
- Wood, Charcoal & Coal~1709Coal has to be dug from mines before it can be burned
- Steam Engine1712Newcomen's 1712 engine was built to pump water out of coal mines
- Critical Minerals & Rare Earths2025-2026Lithium, cobalt and rare earths are mined; new mines are a main response
Sources
More in Manufacturing & Construction · Prehistory
- Pottery & Ceramics~18000 BC