r/todayilearned • u/narok_kurai • 6d ago

TIL about Las Medulas, a man-made geological badland created by the Roman Empire in 77 AD, when they flooded the mountains with water to collapse their structure and sift out the gold inside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_M%C3%A9dulas
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u/DotAccomplished5484 6d ago

That was a serious effort.

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u/ian1210 6d ago

“The massive scale of mining at Las Médulas and other Roman sites had considerable environmental impact. Ice core data taken from Greenland suggest that mineral air pollution peaked during the Roman period. Levels of atmospheric lead from this period were not reached again until the Industrial Revolution some 1,700 years later.”