Archaeological site Rudna Glava

The early Eneolithic mine Rudna Glava near Majdanpek (5000 BC) is an example of the oldest known copper technology. It was explored 1968-1989. within the project Old Mining and Metallurgy of the Central Balkans, led by Dr. Borislav Jovanović (Archaeological Institute of SANU) and Ilija Janković (Museum of Mining and Metallurgy in Bor). Only three decades after its discovery, Rudna Glava has been accepted as one of the strongholds of European civilization. Old Europe was colonized by the populations of the oldest farmers during the 7th and 6th millennia BC, moving from the southern Balkans to the center of Europe. Neolithic farmers worshiped the Great Mother, the ancestor of life, celebrating the renewal of plant life in the constant change of seasons. The introduction of the first metals, copper and gold, opened a new world of the underworld, into whose hidden riches people were introduced by new deities - lightning rulers and great blacksmiths or smelters. In the hidden shadows of the first shafts, the natural channels of the ore veins through which the ores flowed to the surface of the Earth, old agricultural deities and strong, young gods met for the first and last time. They rule with immeasurable forces that drive matter to miraculous changes: shapeless ore blocks form a shiny metal. In the depths of the earth, there was a transformation of the circular flow of nature in the linear time of history, and along with the natural, technological forms began to be born. The essential value of the archeological site Rudna Glava is a clear presentation of autochthonous, domestic work and experience. As on the picturesque engravings of old masters, on Rudna Glava, Vinča miners emerged from the ancient past, settled during the 4th millennium AD from northern Macedonia to the plains of southern Pannonia. Their tools and ceramics, made from local raw materials, originated - in shape and style - from the distant traditions of the Late Stone Age (Neolithic) do not show any traces of foreign influences. The knowledge gained at Rudna Glava, as well as at Ai Bunar, a prehistoric mine in Bulgarian Thrace, completely changed the development and chronological map of the oldest metal industry in European prehistory. The opinion has long been supported that the original metallurgical knowledge spread from the highly developed centers of the Middle East, across the Greek coasts and valleys of the Vardar and Morava, to the Pannonian plains and the upper course of the Danube. Instead, the mining areas of the central and eastern Balkans emerged from the distant past as the first hotspots of the independent development of copper metallurgy. When the original miners depleted the carbonate minerals copper, malachite and azurite, available to the technology at their disposal, the Vinča miners of the early Eneolithic left the mine. The case wanted the neighboring huge deposits of Majdanpek and Bor to become the exclusive destination of miners of the Bronze and Iron Ages, thus leaving Rudna Glava aside. This modest deposit of iron and copper ore - magnetite and chalcopyrite - was used again, with new technology, by Roman miners - slaves in the 3rd century AD. Therefore, the record of the oldest mining on Rudna Glava remained legible and understandable. As the only one preserved in the millennia, he made this site a source of knowledge about the origin of the oldest copper metallurgy in prehistoric Europe.