The most dishonest fiction currently being propagated in
Yes, gold mining has been carried out in
A brilliant scholar who has carried out extensive research into the subject is Dr
Traditional gold-mining was carried out to conformed to the religious beliefs of our people. No mining was done near water-bodies on the "sacred" days allotted to them, or on days designated locally as "dabone" (a festival day like Adae). The ancestors were remembered on such days by pouring libation to them,and sacrificing fowls or sheep. Everyone knew they were keeping an eye on them, and that misdemeanours by citizens would be punished by the ancestors.
But the most interesting aspect of the mining was the technical proficiency with which it was carried out. Care was taken not to harm the people of the community. A European eye-witness called Romer, wrote in 1760 that the Akyem people "dug a slanting pit in the ground, which looked like a staircase, with each step measuring about 3 feet high. Sometimes, a shaft had 50 to 60 steps, and on each step, stood a man who passed up trays full of soil and passed down the empty ones". .
The depth of the pits varied between 12 feet and 30 feet but occasionally, a pit was found that exceeded 150 feet. Some had steps cut into the sides for entry. Others were entered by means of ropes made of creepers.
Another eye-witness wrote that "A native miner ... rarely makes his shaft more than three feet in diameter (so that the danger of anyone falling into the pit is minimised). Planting one end of his digger into a recess in the shaft, the miner places the other end diagonally against the opposite of the shaft, and supporting himself by it, his foot is placed in another of the recesses. He then lengthens out his body and fixes his back firmly against the side of the shaft. Thus supported, he removes the digger, plants it in another recess below the first, and by repeating the operation, gets to the bottom of the shaft. A tunnel, which cannot be long (as his neighbour's shaft is only fifteen to twenty feet from him) is next driven.
"Organised on a family basis, panning for alluvial gold ... . was primarily the work of women, adolescent girls and young boys. Adult males might also participate ... .. Women's alluvial gold washing could be dictated in some states by strict customs. Thus, in one Wassa sub-state, panning for gold was restricted to Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays."
Yet, "experienced prospectors from
In Wassa and
The roof of the shaft was supported with timber to prevent it from caving in or collapsing. To safeguard the public, the shaft was made so narrow that miners could only support themselves between its walls when descending through it. As stated above, steps were cut into the sides of the shafts to help miners climb up and down. When it became too difficult to go any deeper, the work in the shaft was abandoned and another was dug, often only a few meters away. To help light up the dark underground, miners developed a special lamp, made of clay and lighted by wicks of cotton cloth, soaked in palm oil. A horizontal tunnel linked the bases of the shafts.
By the 1860s and 1870s, miners in Wassa and
It was through these intelligently-devised methods that our people were able , through their painstaking labour, to entice the Portuguese (who built "La Mina" [Elmina] castle) the Danes, the Dutch, the Brandenburgers and the British, to come and carry out the lucrative trade in gold with them. In his book,
"Writing in the 1930s, R Junner suggested [that] a total of 11,200,000 crude ounces of gold, or about40,000 ounces per year (1,243 kilograms) for the peak period 1471-1750 and a total of 500,000 ounces, with an average of 10,000 ounces per year, during the half-century 1751-1800." were exported from
More recent figures of exports of gold from
Yet, unlike the fools in our midst who engage in galamsey today, our ancestors left us healthy, potable water sources, such as the
Alas!
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