I have found lots of information on ancient smelting and forging of metal, but precious little on how these ancient people actually found the metal to work with. Most information points to meteor iron and bog/swamp iron, which yielded very small amounts. How did they (or did they even) prospect for iron veins in the earth, well before the invention of things like metal detectors.
In: Technology
People like/need to travel around and sometimes they see rocks. Sometimes they are overwhelmed with the compulsion to pick those rocks up, look at them, and even show them to others. Travel by particular methods, like by boat or simply traveling alongside a river or stream will expose the traveler to a sampling of whatever rocks are found in the region.
I fish and i’ve found all kinds of interesting rocks including magnetite iron ore and Bog iron ore in the river. Magnetite is unusually dense and has a unique crystal structure, so it would be appealing even if you didn’t know it was ore. Bog iron is unusual and almost sounds metallic when you clank it against another rock.. I’ve found Coal too.
Eventually we got so wise as to be able to infer, by association, where certain rocks might be located.
For example, Serpentinite is very rich in Nickel and Chromium. Serpentinite also causes massive changes in ecosystems, forming what are called Barrens. Prospectors used the presence of certain types of plants as an indicator, with great success, to infer where those nickel and chromium sources might be found.
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