Alright kids, here’s your debate for this evening:
Be it resolved that mines suck.
Agree or Disagree.
Mr Drmaj, please begin to debate in AGREEMENT.
* * *
“Ok…. Here we go…
Mining as a profession pretty much stinks.
Especially if you’re living in the 14th century.
In a town outside of Prague called Kutna Hora.
Your life expectancy? 30 years.
Because of the conditions, because of the damage to your body. And, quite probably, because after spending 15 years crawling on your hands and knees in the dark, tasting rocks to determine silver content, you have lost the will to live anyway.
And, for those of you incredibly fashion conscious folks, you probably wouldn’t last 10 minutes. The outfits were white cloaks.
Why white cloaks? Because it’s easy to see people in the dark if they’re wearing white?
Nope.
Because white cloth was the cheapest material they made back then.
You also got a leather apron.
The apron was made so you could wear it frontward, so that when you kneeled, it protected your knees. But that’s not all — it could also be turned around to cover your ass.
Why does the leather apron need to cover the ass? So you can slide down into the mine (on your ass) down thin wooden poles. I’m not kidding.
This is what the “ladders” look like.
Yup, that log-like piece of wood.
Notice that, on the one side of the piece of wood it’s planed and flat. In the 14th century, the miners would slide down this side of the wood to get into the mine. The other side, as you can see, is stepped. When they were heading out of the mine, they turned the pole around. Bingo… instant ladder.
Except — try climbing up THREE HUNDRED FEET using these death sticks.
One wrong move and you’re sliding/falling back down. And since you’re probably climbing out of the mine with 50 of your closest buddies, you better hope you’re the last one in line, because otherwise they are all falling back in with you.
It gets worse.
Candles were too expensive in the 14th century.
Seriously?
What the heck did they do? Mine in the freaking dark?
How the hell are they supposed to see the precious metals? (Silver, in this case, in Kutna Hora.)
Some of the better miners?
By smell.
Not a joke.
Some of the miners could actually smell the silver deposits.
Some of the other rockstar miners?
They used sound.
They would bang the walls with their hammers and listen to the different banging sounds. Silver ore apparently sounds different than granite… (Not that my perpetually-ringing-from-too-many-incredibly-loud-bars-in-my-youth ears would be able to detect the difference…)
Now… it wasn’t all darkness, all the time.
Apparently they sometimes had lanterns in which they burned ANIMAL FAT to get a meagre flame.
Ever try to read by the light of slowly burning turkey fat?
Not fun.
Now, here’s the even crazier part… Getting out of the mine was a process that took over an hour.
And I’m not talking about the physical climbing up those rickety ladders process.
I’m talking about the time that the miners spent on the surface, in a very dark room in which light was SLOWLY let in to allow their eyes to readjust to light.
And when I say SLOWLY, I mean it. (Hence the caps.)
Slowly, as in: it would take an HOUR for their eyes to readjust at the end of their 12 hour shift.
Oh yeah… did I mention that before? The days were normally 12 – 14 hours long.
Mining? Pretty much sucks.”
* * *
Thank you Mr. Drmaj.
And now, we will ask his opponent, whose name you may recognize — Mr. Drmaj — to argue in DISAGREEMENT to the statement: “Be it resolved that mines suck.”
* * *
“Well, I’d first like to point out that my esteemed colleague, while generally being an all around stand-up guy with a delightfully devilish charm and handsome good looks, completely missed the point of the debate.
It isn’t about whether mining sucks.
I think that we can all generally agree that the act of mining, and the experience of mining is not a pleasant thing.
I mean really, the only thing great about mining is that it provides the foundation for most of the things that our society relies on… You know… granite counter tops, iron bars, diamonds.
Sure, mining sucks.
But MINES are cool.
Very cool.
Try going down 327 feet into a mining shaft where 14th century miners used to have to do all that aforementioned crap.
Only, you’ve got a light.
And your white cloak isn’t a cheap piece of cloth that you have to wear everyday of your life… Your white cloth and your miners hat are fashion-fun because it’s dress-up time!
And you don’t have to do any work! You’re only job is to hang out and listen to 30 minutes of crazy mining stories.
Like the one about how, in the early 15th century, the citizens of Kutna Hora used chemical warfare to stave off an invading army.
Back in the days when Kutna Hora was a thriving silver mining town, the town was rich. For almost 2 centuries, the town thrived. Kutna Hora was one of the biggest silver mines in all of Europe. Coins were even minted right here in the town.
But if you’re a thriving town with lots of precious metal, you’re a big target for enemies.
Only, if you’re really smart, you can defeat them without doing hardly anything.
Just throw an enormous concentration of silver run-off into the invading army’s water supply. Which is, of course, the local river. (It’s the 14th century, remember, half a millennium before Aquafina…)
Once you toss in the poisonous silver, all you have to do is… hold off the invaders for a few days while they drink themselves to death. Literally.
It really happened.
And it really worked.
The invading army retreated, half-dead.
That, by the way, is the ‘local river’. The marauder camp was about a mile down to the right…
Oh yeah, one of the other great parts of your mining tour? You’ll come up to the surface glad that you didn’t have to be a 14th century miner!
In closing, I have only 3 words…
Mines. Are. Cool!
* * *
So folks, pro-mine or anti-mine?
You be the judge…