Notwithstanding the religious motives which inspired the earliest rock excavations, more constant and universal throughout history has been the incentive to obtain the useful and decorative minerals hidden beneath the earth's surface. It was the miner who developed the methods introduced by the early civilizations to break rock away from the primary mass, and who added the refinements of subterranean surveying and ventilating, all of which were later to be assimilated into the new art of driving tunnels of large diameter. The connection is the more evident from the fact that tunnelmen are still known as miners.
Therefore, the first model of the sequence, reflecting elemental rock-breaking techniques, depicts a hard-rock copper mine (fig. 1). Due to the absence of specific information about such works during the pre-Christian eras, this model is based on no particular period or locale, but represents in a general way, a mine in the Rio Tinto area of Spain where copper has been extracted since at least 1000 B.C. Similar workings existed in the Tirol as early as about 1600 B.C. Two means of breaking away the rock are shown: to the left is the most primitive of all methods, the hammer and chisel, which require no further description. At the right side, the two figures are shown utilizing the first rock-breaking method in which a force beyond that of human muscles was employed, the age-old "fire-setting" method. The rock was thoroughly heated by a fierce fire built against its face and then suddenly cooled by dashing water against it. The thermal shock disintegrated the rock or ore into bits easily removable by hand.
[Illustration: Figure 4.--HOOSAC TUNNEL. Bottom of the central shaft showing elevator car and rock skip; pumps at far right. In the center, the top bench is being drilled by a single column-mounted Burleigh drill. MHT model--1/2" scale. (Smithsonian photo 49260-N.)]
The practice of this method below ground, of course, produced a fearfully vitiated atmosphere. It is difficult to imagine whether the smoke, the steam, or the toxic fumes from the roasting ore was the more distressing to the miners. Even when performed by labor considered more or less expendable, the method could be employed only where there was ventilation of some sort: natural chimneys and convection currents were the chief sources of air circulation. Despite the drawbacks of the fire system, its simplicity and efficacy weighed so heavily in its favor that its history of use is unbroken almost to the present day. Fire setting was of greatest importance during the years of intensive mining in Europe before the advent of explosive blasting, but its use in many remote areas hardly slackened until the early 20th century because of its low cost when compared to powder. For this same reason, it did have limited application in actual tunnel work until about 1900.