I see videos of gold miners using sluices and only collecting little flakes and being satisfied so I’m curious to know what changed either in society or economically.
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They obtained large amounts of ores the same way we do today: massive mining operations. The main difference is that today we have machines that can do a lot of the heavy lifting, whereas a few thousand years ago it was all performed by humans (lots and lots of slaves in Ancient Rome) and draft animals. They used advanced techniques to dig tunnels, strip mine the earth, and dig massive quarries. One of the more famous sites is [Las Medulas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_M%C3%A9dulas), where the Romans employed types of hydraulic mining to uncover gold. The impact on the landscape of the mining activity (called runia montium – literally “wrecking mountains”) still visible to this day.
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