Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c25.s1.3

v1.c25.s1.3

Most of India's present gold output is from the quartz veins or reefs of Kolar mine. This tradition started in the first millennium BC. At Hatti, Karnataka, a narrow reef had been worked by the ancients to a length of some 1500 m and to a depth of 190 m by fire-setting alone. (Allchin, 1962) The PRL-253 sample from Hatti has been C-14 dated as 760 ± 150 BC. (It may be noted that around 1015 BC, King Solomon brought from India ‘gold, silver, ivory, apes and peacocks’). Various contrivances such as iron gauges, crucibles, stone crushers and windlashes appear to have been used as equipments to recover gold from the reefs; at times, amalgamation was also resorted to.