Copper, zinc, lead ores — Their exploitation and metal extraction by the ancients in the northwestern India

Abstract

India has a rich and impressive heritage in the production and use of base and precious metals. The presence of extensive ancient mine workings and debris, enormous heaps of slags and retorts, ruins of temples and townships of the major mining centres of modern India, bear mute testimony to the art of exploitative and extractive processes in vogue in the early period. The Aravalli range, trending NE-SW, in northwest India, hosts about 80% of the known base metal deposits and 95% of the zinc-lead resources of India. The ancient workings extend to considerable depths, the deepest being at 250 m below surface, which is perhaps the greatest ever achieved by miners in the ancient world. Radiocarbon dating of the materials /artifacts recovered, indicated that many of the mines in Aravalli belt were worked as far back as 400 BC and certainly flourished in the medieval period. The exploitative and quite sophisticated extraction processes of base metals and silver, practiced by the ancients in various areas of this belt are described. Detailed literary evidences of finding different ores, exploitative and extraction techniques practiced by the ancients fromVedic to post-Vedic Sanskrit texts and the archaeo-metallurgical evidences are described. The investigations showed that there are no analogies in the world for smelting processes in general and zinc, in particular, practiced by the ancient metal workers, in this part of the world.