Sacral constituent of the phenomenon of first metals discovery and mastering
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21847/1728-9343.2014.6(132).36010Keywords:
history of mining, production archeology, inception of metallurgy, primary mining communities, sacral factors, mining cults, irrational traditionsAbstract
The paper emphasizes a civilizational significance of discovery of the first production metals, covers prerequisites for ore development and milestones of mastering metals. According to the authors, inception of metallurgy was underpinned by sequential development of mining technologies of the Stone Age and related to formation of a strong cultural community of 'mining people' as early as in the Neolithic age, who had been for centuries developing non-metallic minerals and accumulating mining experience. It was within that community where purposeful long-term mastering of metals began, which was related to miners' sacral cults.
The authors consider some factors of sacral and magic nature as well as activity of ministers of magic cults in the archaic miner's environment as a prerequisite for the inception of metallurgy, while admitting not only rational but also sacral practices aimed at revealing mysteries of metals (similarly to mystic practices of alchemists of historical times). Among those is the discovery of air blowing, which enabled the metal smelting process and was associated with magic rituals of ore testing with extremely strong fire, i.e. the high-temperature mode could have been initially developed on the basis of 'ideological' rather than 'technological' motivation.
Achievements of archaeometallurgy of the recent decades offer brand new evidence to the present-day vision of the Neolithic revolution development, allow to identify an individual well-established community of miners-metallurgists and bring it into line with communities of crop growers and breeders as an important constituent of the Neolithic revolution progress.
References
Borhers V., Vyust F., Treptow E. (1901), Mining and Metals, Industry and technics (Encyclopedia of Industrial Science), Saint Petersburg, Vol. 5, 677 p. (rus).
Kremer G., ed. (1904), Universe and humanity. The history of research of nature and applications of its forces in the service of humanity, Saint Petersburg, Vol. 1, 460 p. (rus).
Chernykh E. N. (1972), Metal - man – time, Moscow, 208 p. (rus).
Hauptmann A. (2000), Zur frühen Metallurgie des Kupfers in Fenan/Jordanien, Bochum, 320 p. (ger).
Babel J. (2008), Krzemionki Opatowskie, New Challenges and Visions for Mining 21st World Mining Congress. The mine as witness to history and a monument of technology, Krakow-Katowice-Sosnowiec (pol).
Chernykh E. N., compiler (2002-2007), Kargaly, Moscow, Vol. I-V (rus).
Gayko G. I. (2012), Birth of metallurgy - why it all happened?, Technology – Youth, № 11, pp. 18-23 (rus).
Gayko G. I. (2009), The history of the development of the Earth's interior, East Publishing House, Donetsk, 292 p. (rus).
Gayko G. I., Biletsky V. S. (2013), History of Mining, Kyiv-Alchevsk, 542 p. (ukr).
Semenov S. A. (1968), Development of technique in the Stone Age, Nauka, Moscow, 362 p. (rus).
Pavlenko N. I. (1962), History of metallurgy in Russia XVIII century. Factories and factory owners, Moscow, 567 p. (rus).
Rabinovich V. L. (1979), Alchemy as a phenomenon of medieval culture, Nauka, Moscow, 392 p. (rus).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2015 Gennadiy Gayko, Volodymyr Biletsky
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
1. Authors bear responsibility for the accuracy of facts, quotations, numbers and names used.
2. Manuscripts are not sent back.
3. The publisher does not always agree with the authors' opinion.
4. The authors reserve the right to authorship of the work and pass the first publication right of this work to the journal under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which allows others to freely distribute the published research with the obligatory reference to the authors of the original work and the first publication of the work in this journal.
5. The authors have the right to conclude separate supplement agreements that relate to non-exclusive work distribution in the form in which it has been published by the journal (for example, to upload the work to the online storage of the journal or publish it as part of a monograph), provided that the reference to the first publication of the work in this journal is included.
