An ancient iron ore mine discovered in Peru reveals civilizations in the Andes mined the valuable rock before the Inca Empire.
Archaeologists have known that people in the Old and New Worlds have dug for ore for millennia, but there is little evidence for such mines in the ancient Americas.
"What we found is the only hematite mine — a type of iron also known as ochre — recorded in South America prior to the Spanish conquest," said researcher Kevin Vaughn, an archaeologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. "This discovery demonstrates that iron ores were important to ancient Andean civilizations."
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