/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>56638639
Really makes me want to live on top of an abandonned mine too kek.

Fun fact i learned not long ago : i don't live far from the oldest silver mine open to the public (a tiny portion only) in the world!

It was a mine exploited between the VII-IXth century, mainly under Charlemagne ruling.
There are 30km of galeries, which i find pretty insane considering how they were working, basically burning the galena with vertical wood faggots set ablaze for hours to scrap the rocky surface, since no tools back then were resistant enough to deal with the rocks. And zero ventilation but few chimneys. Must have been a true inferno to work within.

The fun thing is they didn't stop to exploit it because they couldn't find any more silver, but because they cut down all the trees within a 50km girth to burn down the rock and progress underground kek!
Considering the mines weren't very productive to begin with (4 tons of silver per year at best, 1 to 3gr per kilo of galena they could bring to the surface), it wasn't worth it to double the pain by being forced to also import the wood.