Mining-Man's First Useful Art

Mining may be defined as a general term for the working of valuable deposits of minerals, either organic or inorganic in origin, for their removal from the crust of the earth. Besides subsurface excavations, mining generically includes opencuts, clay pits and stone quarries, oil wells, sulphur wells, salt wells, placers, coal stripping, and the leaching of ore bodies. The origin of the word "mine" or "mining" is a matter of conjecture. A Celtic origin has been suggested since the Irish word mein, or the mwyn, meant ore, but it seems to have come from an olf French verb mineor, which meant to excavate, to make an underground passage as in the military appraoch to a fortification, sometimes called ?sapping.?