Mining and Metallurgy in Medieval Civilisation

Abstract

Nature endowed Europe with extraordinarily varied and abundant mineral resources. The conquest of this underground wealth by the western peoples has been inseparable from the unprecedented power obtained by men in recent centuries over the physical world. This power has come from the solution of technical problems which earlier civilisations had never seriously faced. Many of these problems first became acute in connection with mining metallurgy. Three examples will perhaps suffice. It was the search for adequate means of draining coal pits that led to the practical use of the force contained in jets of steam, to the invention of the steam engine. As the quantities of minerals dug out of the earth increased, their bulky character exerted increasing pressure on men's minds to discover cheaper methods of carrying them over land and water. It was the difficulty of hauling ores and coal in wagons along rough, soggy ground that led to the invention and development of the railway. The demand for larger quantities of metal for use in war as well as in peace pressed men on to discover methods of treating ores which would reduce the labour and the waste involved in separating and obtaining metals. It was the persistence of the western Europeans in exploiting a discovery which probably had been made by many earlier peoples – that iron ore actually melted when the fires were hot enough – which has produced metal in overwhelming quantities from cascades of liquid flame.

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