Seriously how the fuck do they know where the good stuff is going to be, especially back before ground penetrating radar?
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So let’s look at an old gold-rush prospector example:
“You find some gold flecks in a river” let’s find out where the gold came from!
One way to do that is to basically divide the area around the river into a grid and take samples of rock and soil from different areas of that grid. Wash/filter/sift your sample and look for gold flecks – did you find LOTS of gold? Look at how much gold you find in each bit of the grid, and use that to basically play “Warmer/Colder” until you find the source of hard gold deposits.
Now imagine instead of just taking “I’m a prospector who found gold flecks in a river” you scale that up to a mining company that is familiar with general characteristics of the minerals known to certain regions. Instead of “Gold Flecks in the River” your start might become “Exposed Cliff Face with mineral composition known to be found in the vicinity of the stuff you’re looking for” (Different types of ore form under different geological conditions — if you’re looking for “Rare Old Hot Rocks” you want to start looking where you know there are “Old Hot Rocks”). Instead of just “Dig and sift” they can drill and take core samples and see what kind of rock they get but a lot of the general premise is the same.
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