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This in turn prompted John Sutter to build his…sawmill along the banks of the American River on the wooded slopes of the Sierra Nevada. It was in excavating the water-wheel channel for that mill that one of Sutter's men found flakes of gold, and the Californian Gold Rush began."

The third period was the flowering of scientific advances, especially in the uses of electricity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, that led to a surge of industrialization of mining.

Martin points out that another important and often repeated aspect of mining history is the development of current technology. For example there is frequently a mining evolution from bonanza to a heap of seemingly useless tailings. "Yet someone always figures out how to treat those tailings. For example, silver mining in South America was revitalized by mercury amalgamation, and gold extraction in South Africa by the cyanidization of gold tailings."

In 1912, of the world's top 50 largest industrial corporations, ten were firmly rooted in the mining and smelting industries.

Says Martin: "Much of the history of mining is down to individual determination." An immense number of people have been involved, of course, in the interweaving of mining and world history. Most of them were anonymous - the first miners with their antler picks, the prehistoric bronze and coppersmiths and iron forgers, those long dead explorers who searched for outcrops in the wilds of Wales, or South America, or in New Zealand, or China, or the Canadian tundra.



This in turn prompted John Sutter to build his…sawmill along the banks of the American River on the wooded slopes of the Sierra Nevada. It was in excavating the water-wheel channel for that mill that one of Sutter's men found flakes of gold, and the Californian Gold Rush began." The third period was the flowering of scientific advances, especially in the uses of electricity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, that led to a surge of industrialization of mining. Martin points out that another important and often repeated aspect of mining history is the development of current technology. For example there is frequently a mining evolution from bonanza to a heap of seemingly useless tailings. "Yet someone always figures out how to treat those tailings. For example, silver mining in South America was revitalized by mercury amalgamation, and gold extraction in South Africa by the cyanidization of gold tailings." In 1912, of the world's top 50 largest industrial corporations, ten were firmly rooted in the mining and smelting industries. Says Martin: "Much of the history of mining is down to individual determination." An immense number of people have been involved, of course, in the interweaving of mining and world history. Most of them were anonymous - the first miners with their antler picks, the prehistoric bronze and coppersmiths and iron forgers, those long dead explorers who searched for outcrops in the wilds of Wales, or South America, or in New Zealand, or China, or the Canadian tundra.
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Review is published by Rio Tinto, 6 St James' Square, London SW1Y 4LD, England Telephone +44 (0)20 7930 2399 Editor: Cherry DeGeer