Mining (Civ3)/Age of Discovery/Civilopedia

Medieval Europe relied heavily on metals and ores for weapons and manufactured goods, as well as stone to build castles, churches, and other expensive buildings. Stone was usually extracted by quarrying, an inefficient but relatively quick process in which workers simply dug masses of rock out of convenient hillsides. Underground mining, although even less efficient, allowed miners to get at ores found only deeper underground. Medieval mines, described in detail in the 16th century treatise De re metallica, usually consisted of a simple shaft dug more or less vertically into the ground, and several "rooms" or tunnels radiating out from the shaft towards (ideally) ore veins. Miners and ores traveled up and down the shaft in baskets on rickety pulley systems. Mining is still one of the world's most dangerous jobs, and in medieval times it was much worse. Children were often pressed into mining because their small size let them get into smaller tunnels, and the omnipresent threats of collapse, fire, flooding, and underground pockets of poisonous gases claimed many lives throughout the Middle Ages. The arrival of gunpowder made mining much easier and cheaper, but no less hazardous.