Chinese use of mineral resources can be traced back to the advanced era thousands of years ago. After the end of the Stone Age, we entered the Bronze Age and even the Iron Age. The use of mineral resources has helped us to further increase our productivity and leave behind a splendid bronze civilization. But the question arises, how did people find copper and iron ore in an era when people's knowledge and cognition were very weak?
Modern miners already had a variety of prospecting instruments, such as the simplest metal detectors, but at the time people did not have instruments. The mining of copper ore began in the middle and late Xia Dynasty. In the process of constantly searching for copper ore, people have accumulated a lot of experience in prospecting. For example, in the "Pipe and Land Chapter", the experience of searching for seven kinds of metal ore is summarized, including the most important copper and iron ore at that time, as well as the gold and silver mines that everyone dreamed of, as well as the lead and zinc mines that were important for smelting copper and iron at that time, and the mercury mines that were important to alchemists at that time.
This is the most simple experience of people looking for minerals at that time, such as reddish-brown veins, that is, hematite, if magnets are found, then it is copper or gold ore; if galena is found in the rock formation, it is likely to be silver ore below, and ancient people always believed that lead is an important companion of silver. Although the two ores themselves have little to do with each other, lead and silver do have a very close symbiotic relationship.
Similar to lead, silver, mercury and gold. This was the basic relationship that people found at that time, and now this knowledge is basically no longer used in prospecting. People used simple knowledge at that time to find copper ore and iron ore, as for why copper is bronze, it is mainly because the smelting temperature is not enough, and the temperature created by humans is getting higher and higher, and it is possible to use iron ore to make swords.
What do you think?