Emperor Octavian Augustus not only founded the Roman Empire, but also stabilized its monetary system.
The gold coin thus came to have a standard value along with the silver coin.
The final conquest and pacification of all of Hispania with the Cantabrian-Asturian wars (29 to 19 BC) put within their reach the exploitation of the abundant gold deposits throughout the northwest.
The problem was how to get the metal out of the mountains and valleys.
Rome knew that water was essential for this, so the construction of a hydraulic network, through canals and reservoirs, was decisive.
A team made up of about twenty researchers from public and private centers, co-directed by Javier Sánchez-Palencia and Almudena Orejas, from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC),
the location of those structures built by the Romans in Las Médulas (León), which literally burst the fountains, the places from which fountains or springs are born, has culminated).
Rome needed to open 780 kilometers ―a distance similar to that separating León from Cádiz― to achieve its objective.
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This was León 2,000 years ago
Las Médulas was the largest open pit gold mine excavated by Rome in its entire empire.
Its figures are overwhelming: an extension that exceeds 500 hectares, reaching more than three kilometers in width.
In total, 200 million tons of soil were treated, the dragging of which generated sterile discharges from another 500 hectares that, when filling in a valley, gave rise to a lake, Carucedo.
However, such enormous work, contrary to what it may seem, produced only between 4,000 and 5,000 kilos of gold.
Brais Currás, one of the archaeologists on the research team, explains that “it may seem incomprehensible, from our capitalist vision, so much work for almost nothing.
In fact, when an attempt was made to restart the mine in the 20th century, the idea was discarded due to its low profitability”.
Currás adds that in Roman times it was profitable because, among other things, labor cost nothing.
But contrary to what it may seem, they were not slave miners, but
peregrini,
that is, "free indigenous communities, but not Roman citizens, who paid their taxes by working in the mine and then returned to their lands and homes."
Already the
Edict of Bierzo
of Octavio Augusto, from 15 a.
C., shows how Rome established a rigorous land management and an efficient tax system.
The Junta de Castilla y León asked the researchers (an investment of 110,000 euros) to unravel the system with which Rome managed to wash an area equivalent to 500 football fields for two centuries and that forever modified the visual horizon of the region ( an impressive reddish landscape covered with forests that has been World Heritage since 1997).
“The investigation has provided important novelties.
32 channels of the hydraulic network, 39 water tanks and the entire mining process have been analyzed, which has made it possible to establish, for the first time, the sequence of the entire mine and determine that 42 landslides from the mountains took place (
ruin montium
) in the last exploited area of Las Médulas”, recalls Sánchez-Palencia.
General view of the archaeological site of Las Médulas.Ken Welsh (Universal Images Group via Getty)
The experts have established for the first time a detailed development of the phases through which the three sectors of the mine passed.
In Las Valiñas, the largest, up to 28 phases have been identified.
A study is currently underway to pinpoint exactly how the
ruina montium
worked and its use of water to literally burst mountains.
The mixture of earth and water that originated was directed towards some washing places, where the gold nuggets were collected.
The remaining sterile materials accumulated in six large ejection cones or wash tails, including one located in Chaos de Maseiros, the largest, which gave rise to Lake Carucedo.
Of the 32 channels identified, only 30% is currently visible, while the rest of the route is hidden or has been lost due to erosion.
The Board's idea is to integrate this hydraulic network as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC), the maximum legal protection that a heritage element can achieve.
To cause the collapse of the mountains, the Romans dammed the water in large reservoirs, of which 39 are partially or completely preserved. The largest of them (La Horta) had a capacity of around 18,000 cubic meters (18 million litres). .
Archaeological surveys in nine of the canals and in three water reservoirs have made it possible to analyze their fills and date, using radiocarbon dating, the exploitation of the mine between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.
C. It is the first time that direct dates of these structures have been obtained, since until now the chronology was established in relation to the settlements related to the mine.
In the 3rd century, due to a strong political, social and economic crisis, there was a great depreciation of metals (mainly gold and silver) which meant that exploitation was no longer relevant for Rome and it was abandoned without exhausting.
In the 1970s, due to a spectacular rise in the price of gold, French and British mining companies tried to reopen it,
The work of the Sánchez-Palencia y Orejas team will end with a study of the environmental record of the area.
“In this way we will be able to have a fairly precise idea of the evolution of the vegetation and environmental conditions in those first two centuries of our era, as well as assess the impact caused by mining and the global exploitation of the territory carried out by the Roman Empire”, according to Almudena Orejas.
After the mine was abandoned, the landscape was greatly modified.
However, wild nature returned to occupy the land over the centuries.
Today the region is covered with oaks, holm oaks, holm oaks and chestnut trees, numerous animal species (wildcat, wild boar or roe deer), as well as a hundred varieties of birds and birds.
And Lake Carucedo, formed by the exploitation of the mine, was filled with trout.
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