I understand stuff like gold and silver being found in rivers or in visible veins and things like that, but I’ve heard of countless mines where they found coal veins or ore veins that are far less conspicuous than literally visible gold and silver.
So how do/did people find coal veins and other specific metals? Especially back in more ancient times where things like tin, lead and copper were mined well before modern techniques of refining even existed.
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A lot of the vanes were in the open. You used to be able to see open coal vanes on the surface. It might not have been that much but just a hint of it would make people set up a mine and discover the deeper vanes. We have mined away all the open vanes by now. In addition to this ores are usually found along with other types of minerals. We can therefore look for these minerals. A geologist looking for ore can literally walk around studying the pebbles on the ground to find tell tale signs of ores deeper down.
Back in ancient times the deposits were sticking out to the surface, then people just followed the vein until they dug in deep, they didn’t just mine a hole randomly and found stuff.
No such luck now, all of the surface deposits are mined out(at least in populated areas); so geologists make an educated guess where stuff might be found underground and do exploratory drilling to locate deposits before starting to dig a mine.
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