Читать книгу The History of Mining - Michael Coulson - Страница 29

The techniques required to treat copper and iron were introduced into southern Africa as much as 2000 years ago, although exact dating is difficult as climatic conditions have eroded quite a lot of the evidence. Although the people of southern Africa did not formally document their social and commercial activities as was done increasingly in the Roman world from the early centuries AD onwards, plenty of evidence has been found of mining activity, particularly in what is now South Africa.

The main sites were uncovered as a result of geological work carried out ahead of the establishment of new mines – two major South African copper mines, Palabora and Messina in the northeast corner of the country, were built on old mine sites. Palabora is thought to have been originally worked around 800 AD when azurite and malachite were the targets, and a network of chambers with linking shafts and adits was uncovered and investigated before Rio Tinto developed a new copper mine in the early 1960s, a mine that continues to operate today. Messina on the Zimbabwe border is also thought to have been originally worked around the same time as Palabora, and in the southern African region other smaller workings in the form of open pits have also been uncovered, although the dating is often less certain than for Palabora.

Earlier copper workings were found near Agades in Niger where it has been estimated that there were mines in the 1st millennium BC and perhaps before. The Kansanshi area of Zambia, whose modern operations we cover later, was also a mining site around the same time as Palabora. With no written records it is difficult to advance investigations much further than observing the evidence of mining activity in sub-Saharan Africa derived from old workings, basic smelting sites and metal objects, and carbon dating techniques used to assess the age of the evidence.

Of particular interest is the identity of the Africans who were involved in this ancient mining. The curiosity comes from a colonial belief that sophisticated commercial activity would have been beyond the abilities of indigenous Africans so there must have been migration from the north, the Arab world in particular, perhaps in the form of technical advice from Arab traders or perhaps in the form of a long disappeared civilisation.

This line of speculation is similar to that relating to ancient mining activity in North America where, as we have already noted, Indian lore does not seem to include information on historic mining in the Lake Michigan area where ancient workings were found. The conclusion, however, must be that at some time technically advanced African tribes occupied areas of southern Africa and mined copper – it is important to remember that Africa has experienced significant tribal movement throughout history (although critics of the continent’s colonial period sometimes seem to suggest that the Europeans’ arrival disturbed political structures that had existed unchanged for millennia).

Other ancient southern African mining sites have been found in Botswana and Zimbabwe, where copper artefacts including jewellery and beads as well as iron tools have been carbon dated, with some estimated to be from the end of the 1st millennium AD. There is, too, evidence of ancient mining in the techniques for treating low grade iron ores, observed around the turn of the 19th century in West Africa, today a key destination for customers like the Chinese searching for long-term iron ore supplies. The Hausas of Northern Nigeria used galena as a cosmetic powder, which simplified the search for minerals in the region in the colonial period. The development of this traditional adornment is thought to go back many centuries.

There is also evidence of gold mining in the West African region as early as the 5th century, and mining carried out by indigenous miners using techniques not dissimilar from those used elsewhere including fire setting to crack gold bearing ore. The mines themselves were largely relatively shallow pits, alluvial operations and also small-scale underground operations, perhaps going down 30 feet.