Hey dear Hive community, first of all I would like to welcome you all to my new post and hope you all had a pleasant day that was full of positive experiences! Today I would like to talk a little about minerals and hope you can expand your knowledge.
Here you can see pictures of different minerals which all have one thing in common, all come originally from the mines of Lavrion, which are one of the most important mines in ancient Greece and are a very historic place. Lavrion is located in the southern part of Attica which is located near the important city of Athens and already in ancient times the mines were active and particularly known for the mining of copper, lead or silver and the mines were already active in the Bronze Age as can be seen from ancient writings. Especially the cultivated silver contributed a large part to the wealth of Athens and there were numerous workers active there who had mined the minerals and then they came via transport routes to Athens or to other important trading centers nearbywhere they were subsequently sold. The heyday was then in the 5th century BC where the Greeks operated almost especially from these mines and a great rush began at that time and the mines were expanded at a rapid pace and more and more new shafts were dug into the ground. When the siege of Athens came at the time, a large part of the silver was also sold to finance wars with the Persians to liberate the city again and after these warlike conflicts, the mines were very important for the reconstruction of the infrastructure of the city. It is assumed that the mines were still active until the time of the Peloponnesian War and after the mines were closed for a long time it was decided in the middle of the 19th century to open them again and it did not take long until the potential was discovered and the mining was promoted more and more. First the people started to mine the old ore and later they looked for new ones and in 1977 after most of the mineral resources were mined, the mines were closed.
Thank you very much for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about minerals! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!