Las Médulas, located near the town of
PonferradaPonferrada is a town and municipality in El Bierzo shire, province of León,Castilla y León Spain. Ponferrada is the capital of El Bierzo. It lies on the river Sil, a tributary of the river Miño...
in the region of
El BierzoEl Bierzo is a region in the province of León, Spain. The valley has the administrative status of comarca and its capital is the town of Ponferrada...
(
León provinceLeón is a province of northwestern Spain, in the northwestern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León.About one quarter of its population of 500,200 lives in the capital, León. The weather is cold and dry during the winter....
,
Castile and LeónCastile and León , known formally as the Community of Castile and León, is one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain. It was constructed from Old Castile and León in 1983...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
), used to be the most important
goldGold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. It has been a highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since the beginning of recorded history. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Gold is...
mineGold mining consists of the processes and techniques employed in the removal of gold from the ground. There are several techniques by which gold may be extracted from the Earth.-Panning:...
in the
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
. Las Médulas Cultural Landscape is listed by the
UNESCOThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945...
as one of the
World Heritage SiteA UNESCO World Heritage Site is a site that is on the list that is maintained by the international World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 state parties which are elected by their General Assembly for a four-year term.A World Heritage Site is a...
s.
The spectacular landscape of Las Médulas resulted from the
Ruina Montium, a Roman mining technique described by
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
in 77 AD consisted of undermining the mountain with large quantities of water supplied by at least seven long
aqueductAn aqueduct is a water supply or navigable channel constructed to convey water. In modern engineering, the term is used for any system of pipes, ditches, canals, tunnels, and other structures used for this purpose....
s tapping the rivers in the nearby mountains.
Las Médulas, located near the town of
PonferradaPonferrada is a town and municipality in El Bierzo shire, province of León,Castilla y León Spain. Ponferrada is the capital of El Bierzo. It lies on the river Sil, a tributary of the river Miño...
in the region of
El BierzoEl Bierzo is a region in the province of León, Spain. The valley has the administrative status of comarca and its capital is the town of Ponferrada...
(
León provinceLeón is a province of northwestern Spain, in the northwestern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León.About one quarter of its population of 500,200 lives in the capital, León. The weather is cold and dry during the winter....
,
Castile and LeónCastile and León , known formally as the Community of Castile and León, is one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain. It was constructed from Old Castile and León in 1983...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
), used to be the most important
goldGold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. It has been a highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since the beginning of recorded history. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Gold is...
mineGold mining consists of the processes and techniques employed in the removal of gold from the ground. There are several techniques by which gold may be extracted from the Earth.-Panning:...
in the
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
. Las Médulas Cultural Landscape is listed by the
UNESCOThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945...
as one of the
World Heritage SiteA UNESCO World Heritage Site is a site that is on the list that is maintained by the international World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 state parties which are elected by their General Assembly for a four-year term.A World Heritage Site is a...
s.
The spectacular landscape of Las Médulas resulted from the
Ruina Montium, a Roman mining technique described by
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
in 77 AD consisted of undermining the mountain with large quantities of water supplied by at least seven long
aqueductAn aqueduct is a water supply or navigable channel constructed to convey water. In modern engineering, the term is used for any system of pipes, ditches, canals, tunnels, and other structures used for this purpose....
s tapping the rivers in the nearby mountains. The same aqueducts were used to wash the extensive gold deposits, a precursor of Californian
hydraulic miningHydraulic mining, or hydraulicking, is a form of mining that employs water to dislodge rock material or move sediment. Previously, the use of a large volume of water had been developed by the Romans to remove overburden and then gold-bearing debris as in Las Médulas of Spain, and Dolaucothi in...
. The area
Hispania TarraconensisHispania Tarraconensis was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania. It encompassed much of the Mediterranean coast of Spain along with the central plateau and the north coast, and part of northern Portugal. Southern Spain, the region now called Andalucia, was the province of Hispania Baetica...
had been invaded in 25 BC by the emperor
AugustusGaius Julius Caesar Augustus was the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in AD 14.
[These are the contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian after 45 BC...]
, so the mining was initiated some time after the region had been subdued.
To bring the necessary water from the Sierra de La Cabrera mountains to Las Médulas, a system of at least seven parallel
aqueductAn aqueduct is a water supply or navigable channel constructed to convey water. In modern engineering, the term is used for any system of pipes, ditches, canals, tunnels, and other structures used for this purpose....
s more than a hundred kilometers long in total were constructed, with some parts still well preserved in precipitous locations, and including some rock-cut inscriptions.
Description in Pliny the Elder's Natural History
- "What happens is far beyond the work of giants. The mountains are bored with corridors and galleries made by lamplight with a duration that is used to measure the shifts. For months, the miners cannot see the sunlight and many of them die inside the tunnels. This type of mine has been given the name of Ruina Montium. The cracks made in the entrails of the stone are so dangerous that it would be easier to find purpurine or pearls at the bottom of the sea than make scars in the rock. How dangerous we have made the Earth!"
The description could well have applied to Las Medulas. Since Pliny was a
ProcuratorA procurator was the title of various officials of the Roman Empire, posts mostly filled by equites . A procurator Augusti was the governor of the smaller imperial provinces...
in the region in 74 AD, it is highly likely that he saw mining operations for himself, and his text reads like an eye-witness report. He also describes the methods used to wash the ores using smaller streams on riffle tables to enable the heavy gold particles to be collected. Detailed discussion of the methods of underground mining follows, once the alluvial
placer depositIn geology, a placer deposit or placer is an accumulation of valuable minerals formed by deposition of dense mineral phases in a trap site. The name is from the Spanish word placer, meaning "alluvial sand"...
s had been exhausted and the mother lode sought and discovered. Many such deep mines have been found in the mountains around Las Medulas. Mining would start with the building of aqueducts and tanks above the mineral veins, and a method called
hushingHushing is an ancient mining method using a flood or torrent of water to reveal mineral veins. The method was applied in several ways, both in prospecting for ores, and for their exploitation. Mineral veins are often hidden below soil and sub-soil, which must be stripped away to discover the ore...
used to expose the veins under the overburden.
The remains of such a system have been well studied at Dolaucothi in
South WalesSouth Wales is an area of Wales bordered by England and the Bristol Channel to the east and south, and Mid Wales and West Wales to the north and west. The most densely populated region in the south-west of the United Kingdom, it is home to around 2.1 million people and includes the capital city of...
. Opencast methods would be pursued by
fire-settingFire-setting is a method of mining used mostly in antiquity. Fires were set against a rock face to heat the stone, which was then doused with water causing the stone to fracture by thermal shock. This technique was best performed in opencast mines where the smoke and fumes could dissipate safely....
, which involved building fires against the rock and quenching with water. The weakened rock could then be attacked mechanically and the debris swept away by waves of water. Only when all opencast work was uneconomical would the vein be pursued by tunnelling and
stopingStoping is the removal of the wanted ore from an underground mine leaving behind an open space known as a stope. Stoping is used when the country rock is sufficiently strong not to cave into the stope, although in most cases artificial support is also provided...
.
Pliny also stated that 20,000
Roman poundsThe ancient Roman units of measurement were built on the Hellenic system with Egyptian, Hebrew, and Mesopotamian influences. The Roman units were comparatively consistent and well documented.- Length :...
of gold were extracted each year. The exploitation, involving 60,000 free workers, brought 5,000,000 Roman pounds (1,650,000 kg) in 250 years.
Cultural landscape
Research on Las Médulas had been mainly carried out by Claude Domergue (1990). Systematic archaeological studies of the area, however, have been carried out since 1988 by the research group Social Structure and Territory-Landscape Archaeology of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (
CSICThe Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas , Spanish or Spanish National Research Council is the largest public research organisation in Spain. Dependent of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the CSIC is multidisciplinary and carries out research in many science fields through...
). As a result, Las Médulas ceased to be only a gold mine with its techniques and became a cultural landscape in which all the implications of Roman mining were made apparent. The survey and excavations of pre-Roman and Roman settlements throughout the area allowed for new historical interpretations that greatly enriched the study of Roman mining (Sánchez-Palencia, 2000; Orejas and Sánchez-Palencia, 2002).
A positive result of these systematic studies was the inclusion of Las Médulas as a
World Heritage SiteA UNESCO World Heritage Site is a site that is on the list that is maintained by the international World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 state parties which are elected by their General Assembly for a four-year term.A World Heritage Site is a...
in 1997. Since then, the management of the Cultural Park has been monitored by the Las Médulas Foundation, which includes local, regional, and national stakeholders, both public and private. Currently, Las Médulas serves as an example of good research-management-society applied to heritage (
e.g. Sánchez-Palencia and Orejas, 2006).
See also
- Dolaucothi
- Gold rush
A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of gold.Gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States....
- Hydraulic mining
Hydraulic mining, or hydraulicking, is a form of mining that employs water to dislodge rock material or move sediment. Previously, the use of a large volume of water had been developed by the Romans to remove overburden and then gold-bearing debris as in Las Médulas of Spain, and Dolaucothi in...
- Naturalis Historia
Naturalis Historia is an encyclopedia published circa AD 77-79 by Pliny the Elder. It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny...
- Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
- Roman technology
Roman technology is the engineering practice which supported Roman civilization and made the expansion of Roman commerce and Roman military possible over nearly a thousand years....
- Roman aqueducts
External links