to work extremely hard to extract the ore—or at least their
slaves and criminals did. Th e conditions of mining in the
ancient world were so horrifi c that only the most despised
criminals were sent to the mines. Th e ore-bearing rock had to
be extracted from the surrounding stone without the use of
hard metal tools. Instead, the workers pounded at the stone
with hammers made from the hardest rock they could fi nd,
usually dolorite or basalt. Picks and levers of antler or bone
were used to work the larger pieces loose. At Timna Valley in
Israel, miners laboriously dug vertical shaft s linked by galler-
ies. Th ey brought the chunks of ore to the surface for process-
ing and then to higher ground for smelting.
Th e pounding of stone on stone produced huge quanti-
ties of rock dust that would have been inhaled by the miners.
In addition, the ores themselves oft en contained toxic mate-
rials. Lead, for example, is poisonous on its own. Th e cop-
per found in the Near East oft en contains large quantities of
arsenic. It has been estimated that an ancient copper mine in
Jordan produced more pollution (in the form of toxins en-
tering the environment via water, land, and air) than many
19th-century industrial operations. Th is polluting Jordanian
mine at Wadi Faynan was in use from about 4500 b.c.e. and
continued to supply copper to civilizations throughout the
Near East until Islamic times.
Th roughout the fi rst few millennia of its existence, tech-
niques for extracting and refi ning copper ore would have
changed little. Researchers who have studied the production
of metals from mines in Turkey and Jordan concluded that
the ancient workers fi rst ground the ore into powder with
stone grindstones. Th en they put the powder in a shallow
container and fi red it to as high a temperature as they could.
Ancient miners could rarely achieve temperatures as high as
those used in the 21st century, even when they had fuels such
as asphalt or bitumen. Th us they oft en relied on repeated fi r-
ing and sometimes the addition of minerals, which would
lower the fi ring temperature.
Although copper containing natural arsenic was harder
than pure copper, it was still relatively soft. Ancient miners
also sought tin to add to the copper in order to make bronze.
At one time scholars believed that the peoples of the ancient
Near East had to trade over great distances to get their tin.
However, in 1989 an archaeologist claimed to have discovered
a source of tin ore in the mountains of Turkey, and radiocar-
bon dating revealed a mine that had been worked as early as
2500 b.c.e. Th is discovery has led historians and scholars to
conclude that early peoples may have relied much more heav-
ily on small local deposits of minerals, including stone.
For example, unlike the Romans, the peoples of the
Neolithic and Bronze Age ancient Near East would not have
bothered trading for luxury building stones like marble and
granite. Instead, they would make use of local stone wher-
ever possible, even when the stone was extremely hard (and
therefore diffi cult to work) and not particularly attractive.
For example, the sculptors of Sumer, where stone was scarce,
may have relied on boulders and even reused fragments of
other statues. Th e types of stone that were most oft en used
in art and architecture were limestone, calcite, gypsum, and
shale as well as harder stones such as marble, granite, schist,
serpentine, steatite, diorite, and basalt. Th ese were obtained
from the Nur, Zagros, and Taurus mountain ranges and
from modern-day Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and
southern Iran.
Th e techniques of stone quarrying and hard rock min-
ing were extremely similar. Before the Iron Age, quarrymen
had to rely on stone hammers, bone or wooden picks, and
mallets and saws of bronze or hardened copper (which would
constantly need resharpening). By the Neo-Assyrian Period
(ca. 1050–ca. 609 b.c.e.) kings recorded that they sent men
with iron axes and pickaxes to extract stone from quarries.
Images of quarrying show men with saws and shovels as well
as pickaxes of two diff erent types. Th e stone they extracted
was moved out of the quarry on wooden sledges, which were
pulled along over log rollers. Th ere were rarely any roads to
the quarries and it would not have been until the stone was
loaded onto boats that transporting it became relatively easy.
To save time and weight, the stone was oft en roughly shaped
before being transported. Much the same processes would
have been used throughout the ancient Near East to obtain
and quarry stone for statues, reliefs, and buildings.ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
BY TOM STREISSGUTH
Prehistoric inhabitants of Asia used a great variety of objects
and material produced by the earth. Some of this material
was gathered at the surface. Erupting volcanoes, for example,
sometimes ejected a shiny, glasslike rock known as obsidian,
an extremely hard material that could be formed into tools
and arrowheads. Along the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea,
salt collected at the shoreline, and pitch-black asphalt occa-
sionally rose to the surface. Th ese materials had important
household uses: salt as a preservative for food and asphalt for
burning in cooking fi res.
Near Hong Kong archaeologists discovered a stone quarry
on a steep hillside facing the South China Sea. Th ousands of
carefully shaped rocks, some dating to the Paleolithic Era (ca.
30,000–ca. 40,000 b.c.e.), litter the hill and the beach lying
at its base. Th e stones were used as axes, grinders, scrapers,
picks, awls, and arrowheads. Many other ancient quarry sites
have been unearthed in central Asia, where a dry climate pre-
serves traces of ancient human habitation and industry.
People in China and throughout Asia also put stone and
metal ores to work, creating basic tools and weapons that al-
lowed them to gather and hunt their food, build shelter, and
decorate their bodies. As settled cities and urban civilization
developed, artisans began specializing in the use and han-
dling of metal ores. Th rough trial, error, and observation, the
earliest miners and smiths learned how to fi nd, extract, and
use copper, iron ore, and tin. Th ey hammered these ores to
separate them from the surrounding rock and then smeltedmining, quarrying, and salt making: Asia and the Pacific 745