Mining in Bosnia – a historic account Oral traditions and material evidence of mining in Bosnia show us that mining was developed here in prehistoric times. It is considered that the oldest mining areas are situated in central Bosnia (around the mountain of Vranica) and Eastern Bosnia (around the Srebrenica town). Roman historian Pliny the Elder mentions gold mines in Dalmatia by which he means areas around the upper part of the Vrbas river, namely the Vranica mountain where we have documented copper mines from at least 1,000 BC. Folk traditions about old miners are still alive today, old mining shafts can be seen around Fojnica, Kreševo, Dusina and other places. Some, what we consider to be, caves are in fact old mine digs.1 Old traditions in Bosnia-Herzegovina give us narratives about a nation of giants who left Bosnia due to a sudden Ice Age. These giants mined iron ore in the Meomača creek near Drežnica in Herzegovina, where they had a mine and a smelting factory. A similar account we find in the following note: „Above the Karlovići village, in Međurječje near Čajniče, from the antiquities it has been told that there was a forge of the ancient Greeks (one of the synonyms for the nation of giants). There are lots of remains of that iron slag. In the Viogor mountain and also in Vučevica mountain even today traces of their homes can be spotted, landmarks of their fields, and when a beech is ripped from the ground, an old hearth can be seen.“ A similar story we find from near Fojnica in Central Bosnia. „In Russia a man told me, he says: 'When we moved from Bosnia, in that, he says, Čavka mountain, in the middle of the field, there is a spring and water and five loads of golden coins we burried, we couldn't carry... There is a wood there now, a snake couldn't carry her head through, but back then swaths had been left!“2 A historic overview of gold mining in the surroundings of the town called Fojnica gives us a particularly good insight due to the physical proximity of the Bosnian valley of Pyramids and the nearby river of Fojnica which flows through Visoko in the footsteps of the Pyramids. All these accounts serve us to establish the historic continuity of mining in Bosnia in a completely unlinear historic paradigm.
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www.bosnia-underground.com See Vlajko Palavestra: Historijska usmena predanja iz Bosne i Hercegovine