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Current Anthropology
Archaeologists have discovered the oldest mine in the Americas along the coast of northern Chile. The iron-oxide mine dates to about 12,000 years ago.
Archaeologists have discovered a 12,000 year old iron-oxide mine along the coast of northern Chile that they say is the oldest evidence of organized mining found in the Americas.
The mine — essentially a 130-foot long and 20-foot wide trench — was found near Taltal by a team of researchers led by Diego Salazar from Universidad de Chile.
It was dug by the Huentelauquen people, a hunter-gatherer fisher group who were the first settlers of the region.
The iron oxide was used as a pigment primarily for symbolic purposes, the team reports in the June issue of Current Anthropology.
Remains indicate the pigment was used to paint stone and bone instruments. It was likely used in clothing and body paint as well, the researchers note.
While these uses of the pigment are widely known, the history of how indigenous groups exploited and processed the minerals is poorly understood.
The new find sheds light on the techniques and technologies to mine it, including the recovery of nearly 500 hammerstones that date back to the earliest use of the mine.
An estimated 25,000 cubic feet and 2,000 tons of rock were excavated from the mine from around 12,000 years ago to 10,500 years ago and again around 4,300 years ago, according to radio carbon dates from charcoal and shells found in the mine.
The earliest stages of production of the mine are contemporary with the oldest human occupations in northern Chile, the researchers note, and extends by several thousand years the record of mining in the Americas.
The duration and extent of the operation, the researchers add, indicates "the techniques required to exploit and process these minerals were transmitted over generations."
Before this find, a North American copper mine dated to between 4,500 and 2,600 years ago was the oldest known in the Americas.
via Eurekalert
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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Thank god! I have been wondering were the oldest mine in America was my entire life. Now I can sleep tonight.
Carbon dating is fairly inaccurate, wouldnt bet a nickel on it.
The real reason we know the age of the mine, one of the original guys carved his name on the wall.
Manuel was here. 12001 BC.
Manuel left his cave wife for his cave mistress.
ROFL!! Dude, you slay me!!!
Don't go to sleep!! Haven't u heard??? The world is coming to an end tomorrow!!
I'll sell you shelter for $20K all Saturday night to Sunday Morning. I will guarantee your survival unless you do yourself in.
Great, a 12,000 year old strip mine! Even back them people were deshtroying the planet. If only Al Gore's 480th great-grandfather would have denounced the evil of mankind's idea of "progress" and rode around in solar powered donkeys.
Probably the kause of the end of the ice age , or was it Bush,s great , great , great grandads fault. Lol
Donkeys are solar powered
.....even if an accidental spelling...phuny
Interesting. 12,000 years is a very long time ago.. Mining is a fairly advance endeavor for that period. This means there was some kind of industry happening. Making weapons or tools or whatever, both probably. They were making something with it. In those days, everything centered around pure survival and self defense. The entire community was involved. Everyone had a needed job. It was socialism essentially. Its why man was able to survive when it was young.
It was for face paint.....
"While these uses of the pigment are widely known, the history of how indigenous groups exploited and processed the minerals is poorly understood."
No @!$%#, Sherlock! Hunter-gatherer-fishers went to all that effort to make paint??
Never underestimate the wasted labor and resources people are willing to make in the cause of some religious belief system. Look at Eygpt and easter islands for example. Heck rulers were slicing their penis and cutting out hearts by the hundreds. It doesnt surprise me primitive tribal culture went to the wasted effort for a little religious color at all.
Must not be much money in iron-oxide because those strings aint going to keep anyone out!
I'll probably sleep right though the rapture because I am throwing an all night going away party for all my nieghbors tonight. Then I'm going to rush to their houses and load up on flat screenes and fancy cars.
actually the art world still uses iron oxide for pigments in paints today...the world's oldest colors are still used today in paint...they called them earth colors because they come from the earth, (clays, muds, etc) and are really great colors, they range from yellowish-browns, greenish-browns, reddish-browns and all the way to very dark browns.
eee
the raptue--- interesting ----no man knows when its going to happen -- but it is going to happen ===2. unions are a good thing -- its keeps the politicians from stealing any more than they already do. 3. but obama is allowing that to happen so he can get contributions. instead of bringing jobs back and then there would be money from them to bring down the deficit. 4. keep ripping off the poor--- oh im sorry i mean helping the poor victims------lmao
Yep
Did you know,there will be a few seconds,the twinkle of the eye,The Trumpet will sound and a voice will be heard by believers who trust in Jesus,and they will be gone.Then look out you that are still here.You think things are tough now,wait till you need the 666 mark to get somthing to eat.
will 999 work???
Only the Hevenly Father knows when,remember Noah or Gilgamesh which ever,they didnot know till it started to rain,in a place they never ever saw rain.
A boy went out to play before dinner 12,000 years ago. He went into a nearby ditch and began to play in the red mud. When his Huentelauguen mother called him for dinner she saw how dirty he was and told him to go wash in the creek.
While washing off the boy rubbed his dirty hands on his face and bare chest and on his cermional loin cloth (he had left his washcloth at home in the bathroom). On the way home for dinner he found a mastodon leg bone. That is when he noticed the red coloring coming off onto things he touched. So he buried the bone planning to return later with his archaelogy class and dig it up for extra credit, hoping to raise his grade. He attempted to rub off the red dirt on the large boulders he passed on the way home.
When he got home he rubbed his hands all over the walls of his parents home. He got a whopping from his mom for this while his father explained this was to be expected when you leave civilization and settle the wilderness where no one has ever lived before.
After dinner he was outside playing with the other hunter-gatherer, fisher boys. They asked him what it all meant and he told them it was just symbolic and had no real purpose, don't spend years trying to figure it out. With that the boys organized a contest using hand held stones and hammers to see who could break off and crush the most rock from the ditch.
(Taken from a historical account found on clay tablets preserved at the bottom of a nearby peat bog)
The Lord will come as a thief in the night.............. I will pray more of you are believers by the time he does return. The signs appear often through out history, so no one can predict when he will return. Just ask yourself, "Am I ready." I hope to see you at the gates to heaven, but be ready as the time can never be predicted. May all the non-believers, stop and take a moment to actually read the Bible and then decide for yourself. Keep the same open mine you have for everything else in your life and hopefully you will see the Light.
I head from a source the rapture thingy DID happen on schedule ...... just was no one qualified.
halleluyer!! Jesus is magic.
The author of this article didn't do his/her research. The rhyolite, (a stone that can be used instead of flint for tools), deposits at Morrow Mountian, N.C. were quarried there for over 11,000 years. (Yes, a quarry is a kind of mine.)