Mithril, a very precious mineral
« Mithril ! All folks desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver »
J.R.R Tolkien, The lord of the rings, Part one, The fellowship of the ring, Chapter 4, A journey in the dark
Digging for minerals is not just for dwarves! The first human metal productions, in copper, date back to 8700 BC. And since then, metal mining has continued to flourish: while greed has driven the dwarves to dig deeper and deeper, awakening the Balrog, the growing need for metals for electronic components has also led the mining industries of Western countries to seek out African countries.
With much weaker contents and comparatively higher operating costs, the historical French mining operations closed in the 1980s-1990s.
These new extraction sites are not without their social, human and environmental problems.
