Word: coppers
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Archaeologists have long been intrigued by the heaps of brownish-gray slag scattered amid the sandy soil of Israel's southern Negev Desert. First spotted by the late American biblical scholar and archaeologist Nelson Glueck, the heaps seemed to be remnants of an ancient copper-smelting operation of pre-Roman origin. Now, after excavating at the site with a team of West German mining experts, Israeli Archaeologist Beno Rothenberg reports that the slag is only the tip of an archaeological treasure. A short distance away, he says, is the oldest underground mining system ever found...
...traditional view is that the first really large-scale attempts at underground mining, in which extensive shafts and subterranean galleries were used, were not made until the time of the Romans, who mined everything from Spanish silver to British iron and Near Eastern copper. Rothenberg's discovery just about destroys that theory. From the stone hammers, bronze chisels and a cooking pot found in the labyrinthian tunnels of the Negev mine, he concludes that the mine dates back to 1400 B.C. -near the end of the Bronze Age and more than a millennium before Rome's large-scale...
...taken from the mine was a copper-rich material called malachite. It was worked free with stone hammers and bronze chisels, crushed into small pieces and placed in large, saucer-shaped pits. When winter rain flooded the pits, the lighter malachite swirled to the surface and could be more readily separated from the other rock. Half a mile away there were 13 furnaces, where the Bronze Age metallurgists smelted the ore, using iron as a flux (a substance that combines with impurities, forming a molten mix that can be easily removed). Bronze Age miners were able to produce...
...known as the Fourth World. The old Third World became a more exclusive, OPEC-led grouping, limited to those nations that are exploiting their rich mineral or agricultural resources. Emboldened by the oil producers' success, many other Third World countries tried to create their own price-fixing cartels for copper, iron ore, tin, phosphates, rubber, coffee, cocoa, pepper and bananas. Their leaders talked of "one, two, many OPECs." The grand plans generally failed because members have lacked the cohesiveness to make them work ?so far. But the new importance of raw materials moved some big producers to raise prices...
...diamonds are not Botswana's only friend. Copper and nickel are now being mined in the eastern part of the country and shipped to the U.S. for refining. The mining machinery will soon be powered by Botswana's coal. Mineralogists have found that perhaps 400 billion tons of coal-almost two-thirds of the proven reserves in all of Europe-lie beneath the country's soil. Additional recent copper and nickel discoveries have been labeled "very promising" by representatives of U.S. Steel, and deposits of manganese, asbestos and gypsum have yet to be developed...