Flint mining
Deep shafts and galleries are dug with antler picks to reach good stone underground.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 200 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
At Spiennes in Belgium from around 4300 BCE, and later at Grimes Graves in England and Krzemionki in Poland, Neolithic miners sink shafts more than ten metres deep and drive galleries outward to follow seams of high-quality flint, working entirely with antler picks and wooden shovels. Spiennes covers around a hundred hectares. It is heavy, specialised, dangerous industrial extraction, organised well before metal.