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The mining of metals and coal in China goes back at least 3,000 years, but Chinese mining technology has remained primitive by western standards for almost all of that time. Today, rapid industrialization, a rapid growth in geological and mineralogical knowledge, and a growing awareness of the mineral specimen market, all promise to keep increasing the supply of fine collector mineral specimens from China.
HISTORY
"People naturally don't like the dark. Who would want to be a miner digging galleries in the vicinity of the yellow springs?"
Want Chung Lun Hong, A.D. 82
Mining is known to have taken place within the boundaries of modern China more than 3,000 years ago (Zhu Xun, 2002). Archeological excavations in the mining center of Tonglushan, near the city of Daye in Hubei Province, have revealed important historical information concerning mines that were active during the time of the Chinese bronze culture, whose original settlements go back to the beginning of the Shang Dynasty, firmly dated at 1766-1121 B.C. There in 1973 a 3,000-year-old copper mine with smelting facilities was discovered on Mt. Verdigris. At this site, near the Yangtze River about 20 km southwest of Huangshi, more than 400,000 tonnes of ancient slag were found, covering a surface area of 20,000 square meters.
The ancient Tonglushan mines worked the oxidized zone of a high-grade copper deposit, probably discovered because of malachite showings on the surface. Archaeological excavations unearthed tools made of bronze, iron, bamboo, wood and stone, as well as uncovering more than 100 separate diggings and dozens of smelting furnaces; the total length of the trenches and shafts has been estimated at 8,000 meters. These workings can be dated as having existed between the 11th century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D., during which time a total quantity of copper between 80,000 and 120,000 tonnes was extracted. It is interesting to note that one of the early excavations revealed a 60-meter-deep shaft extending 23 meters below the water table as it was then. In Tonglushan today, near the ancient mine workings, there is a large open-pit copper mine which provides small calcite crystals and low-quality azurite rosettes to modern collectors.
To be sure, the Chinese culture was not the first to use metals, but in the...