The techniques employed by the Karnataka miners influenced gold mining in Rhodesia

Digging deep into India’s past, geologists have evidence to show that gold mining in India was first attempted before the Christian era.

Some of the modern-day gold mines in Karnataka — such as Kolar, Hutti and Uti — served as a hunting ground for the precious yellow metal as early as the first century BC, say researchers at the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), Hyderabad, and Hutti Gold Mines Company Limited (HGML), the public sector gold mining firm in Karnataka. While the Kolar gold mines have closed, the Hutti and Uti mines in Raichur district are still the mainstay of gold mining in the country.

Materials such as wooden logs, ash, charcoal and pottery that the scientists collected from the ancient mines indicate that the principal mode of exploitation was through fire setting, they write in the latest issue of Current Science.

While the Egyptians are credited with operating the world’s oldest gold mines — which are about 6,000 years old — geologists earlier believed that Indians took to gold mining nearly 3,000 years ago. But scientists are yet to receive material evidence to prove this date.

However, argue the scientists, the techniques pursued by the Indian miners had a huge influence on their counterparts in Rhodesia (currently Zimbabwe). “It appears that the Rhodesians were inspired by the ancient mining activity of Karnataka, and developed their mining activity since the third century (AD),” the scientists say.

A wooden log that Prabahakar Sangurmath of HGML found at Uti was estimated to be nearly 1,300 years old. Using radiocarbon dating (a technique to determine the age of very old objects), the researchers found that the log belonged to 660-780AD. An earlier study had picked up evidence to show that gold mining was carried out in Hutti as early as 40BC.

What, however, has surprised the scientists is that there has been a 1,200-year gap between ancient and modern gold mining in India. Considering that the mining sites remain the same, cessation of mining for such a long period remains a mystery, says Pasupuleti Nagabhushanam, an NGRI scientist who led the study. He thinks it would be interesting to see if the ancient miners moved to any other gold mines in the Deccan region, deserting the ones they were engaged in.