The Ancient Copper Mine that Transformed Britain
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- Опубліковано 22 тра 2024
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The Bronze Age copper mine on the Great Orme in North Wales, is one of the most important prehistoric archaeological sites in Britain. Since excavations began here in 1987, a vast network of tunnels dating to the Bronze Age has been uncovered.
The copper from this mine helped transform bronze age Britain and Ireland - and even more distant lands.
But who were the people who dug these incredible tunnels? Why did they work so hard down here in the darkness and for so many centuries? Who were the wealthy and mighty chiefs who ruled over them?
And what did they do with the hundreds of tons of copper they excavated here?
This is the remarkable story of the largest and most important copper mine of bronze age Britain.
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Video Sources
Great Orme Mines website ➜ www.greatormemines.info/resea...
Video Chapters
00:00 the Largest Prehistoric Mine
00:48 Video Sponsorship
02:00 The Great Orme Copper Mine
05:14 Prehistoric Mining Tools
06:45 19th Century Discovery
07:37 Fire Setting to Weaken Rock
08:20 Lighting in Ancient Mines
09:22 Mining in Bronze Age Britain
10:21 The Great Orme Miners
11:00 The Great Chiefs of the Mine
12:33 The Mold Cape
13:17 Where did all that copper go?
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Thank you. You do excellent work
Love your videos Dan! Recently, I discovered your books and fell in love with Gods of Bronze. Any idea when Book 3 will be out? :) I NEED BOOK THREE!
In one of your other videos where they have found domesticated cattle bones way before they went there in Ireland, the Ross Island Mine may have been the point of the cattle going there in the first place. It could of been people going there specifically to mine and it didnt end so well for them when the locals came...
wonderful series young man, it may be so Chiefs needed ex tremely capable men to guard trade routes and protect Cheifs going to visit relatives to swap daughters and strengthen clans connection. these were not primitive people but sophisticated businessmen and women and savvy. Human is a warrior culture, it always has been so. Without warriors wealth would not have grown and human development very different indeed. thank you for your presentation.
After watching such a long add I will watch this video but no more
The fact that Bronze Age civilizations were this connected is insane.
There sure was a lot going on in Europe before the Romans. Alas, only with them came the practice of writing things down.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the celts did write things down but they’d been destroyed by the romans upon arrival / lost to time
Sad to tell you the Roman’s never existed. Your his-story is a Jesuit lie.
Debatable to an extent, with the great pictographic hieroglyphic like neolithic writing systems, symbology and celtic writing like tablets found in Iberia.
I find it incredible thinking what our ancestors were doing so long ago. I want to visit the Great Orme mines now.
An unbelievably thorough presentation as always. It's refreshing and impressive how much information you cram into every video without even allowing it to become dull or dense.
Thank you very much, appreciate it. I don't like it when UA-cam vids draw stuff out or go slow so I try to keep up a good pace. Cheers.
@@DanDavisHistory We appreciate you for it! Cheers Dan, love your work.
@@DanDavisHistory i like how you hint much data is available with a few charts here and there.....
Yup, nothing new. Just pristine work
I'm not sure why you find it "unbelievably". Did you not watch the same video I just did? I find it believable because I see it.
As a geologist and an ancient history fan I really loved this one. Thanks!
That Cheshire flood plain you highlighted on the map is still some of the best agricultural land in Britain today! The Cheshire show is still the largest agriculture and livestock show as well, I believe. I can see how that relationship could’ve risen to great local power. Isn’t it also weird that the area surrounding that mine, north wales etc, is still the area with the most Welsh speakers and that area around there and Anglesey is where the ancient welsh kings survived through the Roman period and the Anglo-Saxon period and the Norman period - in fact the Tudors hail from there originally, do they not? That copper mine sure has left a legacy. Really appreciate your videos - some of the very best content on here, thanks!
The close proximity of copper and tin in the British isles and Ireland would have made it a magnet for metal aware "beaker people", from mainland Europe, I'm thinking like the California gold Rush for migration and drawing prospectors and miners let alone smelters and metal workers.
Another pressure on the Neolithic farmers who already inhabited the islands.
Well the timescale seems to be migration from around 2500, the west Irish mine around 2400, the middle west of Britain from 2200 onwards, tin mines start about 2150.
So it seems the Bell Beakers came for other reasons initially. After that perhaps more people came. But no doubt that was at the behest of the chiefs controlling the mines - eg the Wessex culture controlling the tin mines.
@@DanDavisHistory Cornwall was never fully integrated into Wessex and in any event both entities are a post Roman political construct. However, during the bronze age the area that became Cornwall was a self governing tribal area with long standing trade links to the Eastern Mediterranean. Indeed, the lack of Roman style settlements in the archaeological record suggests the Britons in present day Cornwall and South West Devon were left to continue streaming for tin and other precious metals largely unhindered by the Roman Empire.
@@kernowboy137 it's got nothing to do with Roman or post-Roman era. The Wessex culture is the name of the Bronze Age people of southern Britain who controlled and benefitted from the international trade routes.
Fascinating video. I worked on this site as an archaeological volunteer in the summer of 1989, in the early stages of its excavation. We got to go down and explore the tunnels, which brought home just how extensive the workings are. There was so much bone in the site that most of it ended up in the spoil heaps, and I still have a few green-stained pieces I took as souvenirs. It's a pity this ancient mine isn't better known to the general public. In its own way it's just as impressive as any of the megalithic monuments or tombs that we associate with the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.
That cape being made out of one piece of gold is insane.
Amazing how you merge anthropology, archeology, high tech DNA research and now a focus on geology, which amazing skills in communication and literary excellence.
I visited Great Orme a few years back on a whim to fill a spare afternoon without being aware of its importance, and I'm so glad I did. Incredible place and I'm looking forward to watching this video tomorrow. You always seem to do videos on subjects that I have great interest in, Dan! And fantastic videos at that!
Thank you! Hope you enjoy the video.
"Orm" still is the Norwegian word for "Snake" or "worm".
@@grimfpv292 ,,, th' Long memory uff laguHs ) puunnnidid agin,, much sore-eyed m shua ... ( OWL the wary beast from Berlin ...
Ancient metallurgy is so fascinating. Excellent information, as usual. Thanks!
Love these prehistoric videos. Always feels like peeking behind a usually-impassable veil
Thanks mate.
Thank you for this seriously indepth video on the copper and bronze age of britain, I especially loved the section on the mold cape with how intricate it is
Thank you, glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for another fantastic video! A great thing about your videos isn't just the wonderful information given, but the way it's presented. The ambient music, photos, graphs etc. all really work together to give a vibe I don't get often from other similar presentations. I really feel immersed into a long gone period of history whenever I watch your work.
Thank you very much.
Great video; I just wanted to add that they didn't just "let the rock face cool down" when they lit fires to heat up the rock. They would heat it up, and then throw buckets of as cold water as they could find onto the face to cause it to shatter.
Thank you. As a Mining Engineer you have now given me another destination for my bucket list!
During my time at university I worked on austrian copper age slags, since then I'm fascinated on everything bronze. Thanks for uploading this video on the mining.
May I propose to do a similar one on tin mining?
Good idea.
Bill Miller...better yet...on Pretentious ass-holes....
When I was in archaeology, many moons ago; the question was asked of us, 'Where was the tin mines?' in Britain. But. .. it was asked concomitant with the conversation about Cypriot copper. At no stage was the British copper and British tin to make British bronze and get the Bronze Age going in Britain even a thing. And now, here you are ... nicely done. Very nicely done.
Bruh, you are always that channel with that "I had no idea I would be interested in this" content within a subject (pre ancient history) I am immensely interested in
Great video as usual. I was lucky enough to be able to visit the mine about five years ago or so. It certainly is impressive, especially the great chamber. To think that was all carved out in Prehistory with just stone and bone tools is impressive.
This channel is starting to become one of my favorite channels
Important to note that White Oaks dont rot, making them ideal woods for a wet mine, and the carts and such.
Still used here as the desired flooring for cargo trailers/cattle trailers.
Thank you, as always, for your lovely content ♡ it's a calming and educational way to keep background sound on while I work. You're starting to become a self comfort haha. You've helped me be a lot less anxious about starting tasks because I can learn while I do them and your voice is even enough to match breathing exercises to!
Outstanding work as always! I really enjoy how you convey information; your phrasing and context-rich economy of words is really engrossing.
Your narration, as always, is robust, clear, and relaxing...a voice made for storytelling.
Great video Dan! Interesting topic 👍
Excellent coverage, thank you. 👏🏻
What a great video. Can you even imagine what a global treasure that site would have been if left in its natural state? I fully understand its sacrifice for the advancement of western civilization, but as an amateur Geologist, I am also aware of that magnificence that amount of malachite and azurite would have been.
I wonder what they did with the azurite? Possibly much of the jewelry back then was made from them. Gems were also used as money.
To what end?
Yeah. It'd be virtually worthless. Just another pretty cave that people take pictures of with their cell phones. Whoop-dee-doo. Not much point in having a mine if you aren't doing any mining.
@@WorldWalker128 veery true, if they didnt mine it modern civilization would have
Fantastic again Dan I thoroughly enjoyed this episode , it was some undertaking, amazing and so innovative our ancestors were, well as usual a brilliant insight into our history. Love the channel and love the books . Peace all 🇮🇪
Hey man this is fascinating stuff. Just discovered your channel and really appreciate it. Its like all the stuff I would love to know but didn't know I didn't know.
I greatly appreciate your efforts. This compilation of research and your presentation is awesome.
Excellent video. Thank you for your analysis.
Great stuff thanks for sharing
You've been busy. Great work!
As always very well researched and presented. This is an important slite for british and european history.
Great presentation. Thank you so much.
Always loved reading about this site. Appreciate the content!
Love your work as always! Thank you
Love this video and your channel! Thanks for the work you do.
Fun to toboggan down and visit for archaeology. Nice lil town Llandudno. Used to visit most Christmases as a kid.
I love your work Dan. Keep on creating and I will keep watching!
Thoroughly enjoyed your video. Subscribed 👍
Very interesting and informative. Thank you.
Amazing upload. Really enjoyable stuff. Bless up 👊
great documentary as always
Thank you.
Good work.
Amazing channel. Great video
This my first of your videos and I have to say it was fantastic. Subscribed
I went up there in 1986 I just missed the start of uncovering this I must go again
Excellent video! Your trip really paid off
Thank you, glad you enjoyed it.
Once again a fabulous and informative vid 👏👏👏👍
it's amazing how there was an international trade route back in the bronze ages and even before. especially tin from the UK
Great vid!
Thanks Bro 🙏
This was REALLY excellent!!
Thank you.
enjoyed this much
You coppers will never take me alive, oh wrong kinda copper.
Cracking vid 👏👏
Great work! Keep it up
Thank you.
Love it Dan back to TERRAMAR just fascinating the gradual revelations...thanks!
A video on Tin mining, would nicely explain the rise n fall of the bronze Age. But you got a new sub for this video. Great history presentation.
Awesome topic
Fascinating!
This is a very good video. I'm fascinated by this type of thing and I'm a new subscriber! Keep up the great videos
Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the other videos.
Great video, glad I stumbled on your channel, you have a new subscriber sir!
i love bronze age stuff
Love your channel, I'll have to check out your books.
Hmm what I find interesting about this is the geological circumstances for why this mine and other Porphyry copper deposits are connected to the ancient volcanic arc archipelago of Avalonia the limestone and dolomite are Carboniferous in age but hydrothermal alteration like this requires a underlying magma chamber given that the formation of Laurussia/Euromerica to form the Caledonian orogeny took place 430-420 Mya which would have terminated such volcanic activity this means this copper would have had to have been entrained millions of years earlier than that when Avalonia still existed as an island arc complex much like modern Indonesia today. This means the timescales between when these minerals were entrained by geothermal activity and when humans found and excavated them are unfathomably vast, seeing the formation of Pangaea, the colonization of Pangaea by the amniotes, the rise of synapsids including the mammal like therapsids, their downfall in the great dying leaving only a few groups most notably the small burrowing cynodonts form which mammals are the last descendants, the rise of the equally metabolically active but metabolically more efficient archosaurs outcompeting most remaining synapsids seeing the first dynasty of the pseudosuchian archosaurs terminating at the end Triassic extinction leaving only the crocodylomorphs with dinosaurs rising to their prime for more than a hundred million years ending only in a sudden cataclysm arriving at one of the worst places when when the climate was already stressed, and even when the lucky few mammals and birds survived into the post impact winter it still took over 60 million years for our genus to rise and only come to dominate our world in the last 50,000 years through technological innovation.
In essence these ore deposits have sat there for more than 2/5 of a billion years as mountains rose an fell terrestrial ecological dynasties came and ended in unthinkably monuments cataclysms only to be discovered and mined out in the geological blink of an eye by humans the extent which our species has developed to shape our world is frankly astonishing.
And now some of that copper/bronze is almost surely in a silly gadget that entertains a modern human until it breaks. Eons of formation only to become a trendy toy that will be discarded and forgotten for another age to discover.
welcome to Dan the ADD MAN !
Amazing work. Mining is a tough and dangerous job in the modern day. I can only imagine how hellish it would have been for people in the bronze age. It would be interesting to know what the average lifespan of a miner from that mine would be. I imagine fairly low. Which also brings into question how they would have kept the mine filled with workers. Obviously, raiding for a fresh supply of slaves would have been one way, and they probably did just that. However, I wonder if there was any sort of freeman, adventure situation which would attract people to the mine in a similar manner to the gold rushes of North America. People looking to better their status in life. Although, much of the gold rush was predicated on the idea of staking a claim and therefore owning what you find. I imagine the entire mine would have been owned by one elite family or another. In which
case anything found within the mine would automatically belong to the Chief. Whatever the case, it would have been brutal, hard work.
Yes for sure it must have been awful and dangerous. Many of the tunnels are truly tiny - shoulder width for a child, extending horizontally off the main tunnels.
There were four burials of children dating to the late period of the mine found in a cave. They might have worked the mine.
Perhaps they raided other lands for slave workers and purchased them through trade.
But for generations of these people the mine must have been the focus of their lives. Expertise passed down for generations.
These kinds of conditions continue in the gold and silver mines in south and central America
@@DanDavisHistory I like that, no need for slaves or complicated migratory reasons. Just have the kids do it. Makes the most sense. Doing it for generations then kids would grow up working in the mine.
@@maxkronader5225 bread beer and bed.
The skeletons of Bronze Age copper miners near Barcelona were found with much damage caused by chronic repetitive hard work. Some were also found to have fragments of opium poppy seed capsules lodged between their teeth. Presumably, they needed the pain relief to carry on working.
Thank you sir
Every where the miners always walked down hill at the end of the day. NO miner wanted to walk up hill at the end of they're shift. My father was a sparky in the Fife pits of Scotland.
Well done, Dan. You bring a lot of life to these Bronze-Age peoples. I'm sure they would be very appreciative.
Been to Llandudno countless times, even using the ski slope there and never knew this was here 😂
Definitely going visiting next time I go, thank you for you fantastic and fascinating video 👍
The bronze cape is incredibly intricate and beautiful❗
I wish more media was set in this time period. Instead of everything being Classical at best.
Fascinating.
Brilliant stuff 👌👍💓🇮🇪
Hi Dan Great to see a video on the Orme Copper mine. especially as i live in Llandudno. Really enjoyed this video as your others very well put to together and well researched. i would love to talk to you and others about some of these points. Do you have a discord channel?
On the point of who controlled the Great Orme mine i have a few thoughts. As you know coasts and rivers were the motorways of their day it would of been easier to travel large distances this way so trade would of moved this way but also the Irish sea was a sort of British Mediterranean sea so i think the populations would of been around the coasts of Wales, Ireland, England and Scotland. In regards to who lived and worked there, there is a hill fort on the Orme a little lower down next to "happy Valley" or if you are looking on google maps just SE of the ski slope. there are also a large number of close by hill forts (some of which are dated later/Iron age) down the Conwy valley where the Conwy river would of been used as a road North to south.
Always good to see one of your videos but i was delighted to see one based on my home town, thanks for doing these.
I have family there which is why I've been so many times.
I don't have a discord. My top patrons have access to a private Facebook group and all patrons can message me there.
Interesting that the mining activity seems to conincide with the arrival of the Beaker Folk from Continental Europe. Do you imagine that is because they had the knowledge and the technology? as rudimentary as it was for the period. Fantastic work as always Dan.
Yes they had copper working when they came. They brought copper daggers with them.
Thank you
Cornwall should have been an empire in the Bronze Age with their tin.
You would think that, wouldn't you? But sometimes, the locals don't know what they have, nor the value of it, and it is outsiders that set everything up - primarily for their own benefit, of course.
You could theorize they did just not a militant or expansionist. Think of how the Carthaginians and Pheonecians had powerful empires but mainly did so through trade and financial domination. Considering how hard mining was holding down the mines was probably more important than colonizing and conquering territory.
Thanks for another excellent video, Dan! I would love to learn more about the transition to metalworking among Bell Beaker and related cultures; and its possible impacts on migration, conflict, and settlement. The Chalcolithic Era was actually quite brief, no? In retrospect, that period of human history - from stone to copper to bronze to iron - seems almost akin to the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th Centuries.
fascinating
Such hard work required massive amounts of food . There had to be food preperation areas. They were tough peoples.
Great place, highly recommend going to check it out
I'm gonna have to go and give these mines a gander
Greeks were known copper traders at the Britanic islands. The most known naval expedition for this purpose was that of Pytheas from Massalia(Marseil) who circumnavigated Britain. His expedition was so legendary that sparked myths about Hyperborean islands(Thule, Avalon etc). Another ancient Greek name of Britain is Kassiterides nisoi=tin Islands (although I personally prefer the more mystic Greek name of Albion) .
Pytheas' voyage of exploration was a over a thousand years later. The Greeks never needed to come to Britain for copper when there was plenty far closer. And just because they knew roughly where some tin mines were doesn't mean they ever had to come to get it themselves. Bronze Age Britons exported tin to their neighbours who exported it further and so on by stages into the Mediterranean.
Maybe not Greeks but I read somewhere Phonecians did
Nice...I'm a new fan..
Seriously, though. It's amazing how much more sense Elden Ring makes after watching this channel.
Pretty fascinating stuff. You should consider voice modulation in post if you really feel the need to lower it as it's terrible for your vocal cords.
awesome film nice to see my bronze in it
Thank you very much Neil. Did you make reconstructions for the Great Orme visitor centre?
Dan are those time frames you quote for operation of the mine flexible? Take a look at copper outcrops in Michigan. Mining above ground may have taken place due to ample above ground reserves. Wars, famin, disease, copper poisoning among other types of poisons, etc would have dragged out those time lines out farther.
I read that much of the Cornish Tin was shipped to America by the Phoenecians and used with the MIchigan copper. I think the historical timeline beyond 200 years ago is inaccurate for many reasons, including that radiocarbon dating always needs a known reference date such as Pompeii 79AD, which simply follows from the bogus Scaligerian timeline.
Wow" really gives a good idea to how much is still out there to be found.
Cornwall and the Tamar valley have a few too, some with veins undersea.
Cool, about the word “Orm” it is still the word for snake here in Sweden, interesting.
I suspect it to be preserved in the word " worm". Would be interesting to know where the "w" came from.
Thanks for the tidbit. Why is it always snakes?! I've heard the tribe of Dan's standard was a serpent. Snake oil and alchemy... seems like a strong correlation between them. As I understand it Apollo slayed the serpent at the oracle of Delphi, according to legend. The chief priestess was called the pythoness. Hippocrates early medical practices included mercury and snake oils. The red cross of st. George and his slaying of the serpent seems to be an assimilation of Apollo's legends. The red cross of the hospitallers and the snakes around Mercury's rod are still medical and merchant symbols. Artemis was twin to Apollo. Twins seemed to merge into Janus mystery school, the subterranean ruins which the Vatican is built upon. The pope sits in a hall shaped like a serpent's head. Tuatha de danann, prevalent Smiths, st.patrick driving out the snakes.. Bunch of Cretan seamen by my estimate. Sorry for spewing incomplete thoughts, but that's what the internet is for right, speculative Mish mash.
@@spegree02 Snakes have been important throughout history and pre-history all over the world. You'll even find them in cave paintings, so it goes way way back. They appear in many origin stories too and even in Genesis they play a rol (Adam - Eve - tree of wisdom - snake - expulsion from paradise).
@@telebubba5527 The W was retained in west Germanic languages like English but lost in the North Germanic ones. Where we have wulf, the Norse had Ulf, where we have Woden, the Norse had Óðinn, etc
Hi Dan, interesting as always, but the map got me. Why is Voorhout on the map? The village, it was tiny when I grew up there.
Thank you, yes the site is shown on the map - along with a site in Brittany and another in Sweden - because they found examples of a type of palstave axe that was made at the Great Orme. This shows the trade routes of the finished products of Great Orme copper and the object manufactured from it. And therefore the general trade routes and social links between Britain and the coastal regions beyond its shores. Voorhout must have had bronze age activity. It is also one of the few sites where the palstave metal underwent proper chemical analysis tracing its origins, which is why its shown so prominently.
Interesting
I have another suggestion for the decline of copper mining from 1600 BCE. The start of the mining corresponds to the rise of the Minoan culture, overseers of the Mediterranean Sea of early bronze age. The Minoan eruption that occurred ca 1600 BCE destroying most of the Minoan fleet and decimating many of the seashore cultures due the gigantic tsunamis that ensued from a series of explosions. The estimate for the largest explosion is at least 10 times stronger than the 1883 Krakatoa explosion. It took at least 4 centuries for the reestablishment of the naval trade route by the Phoenicians. In addition, the rise of the iron age initiated by the Hittites effected the future demands for bronze.
The Minoans never came to Britain. Neither did the Phoenicians.
When the Minoan culture suffered a decline, Crete and the Mediterranean trade routes were taken over and expanded by the Mycenaeans. They just about reached the Mediterranean coast of Iberia.
@@DanDavisHistory There are many indications mentioned in the literature that at least the Phoenicians did get there as early as 2000 BCE (personally, this date will fit better the Minoans) and that they had been quite secretive about it. This issue is also discussed from a linguistic point of view in the podcast "Strange Similarities Between Celtic & Semitic Languages!"
@@hweiss1182 No the Phoenicians only emerged as a regional power in the Eastern Mediterranean after the Bronze Age collapse ie after 1200 BC. They didn't even reach the western Mediterranean until around 900 BC.
The Minoans never came to Britain either.