Reddit reviews The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. 1

Going to use a comparison to Minecraft here, bear with me. When you start the game you're running around in a pristine world. After a bit you've probably found coal and iron visible from the surface. As time goes on and the surface resources are depleted, you go deeper into the caves to find what you need. Eventually you're branch mining at level 5 looking for diamonds.

Humans in history followed this same sort of progression. In the stone age there was plenty of resources for tools and art at or near the surface. In certain places where a particular stone was found, humans would keep digging in the same places as long as they kept finding what they wanted. I believe there are a number of places where there's evidence of riverbanks/cliffs being dug into by people seeking flint, for instance. As technology improved to the point of being able to melt bronze, then later iron, there happened to be enough of these resources near the surface to support the development of the technology before humans had to dig progressively deeper to continue finding the resource. It was discovered that certain places were better to look than others, and a little bit on the surface typically pointed to more under the surface. The Athenians/Greeks for instance realized that there was a lot of silver in the ground at Laurium, so they just kept digging there and exploited that area for millennia. Recall that a particularly rich vein provided the funds to establish the Athenians as a major sea power between the Persian invasions. Same with the Roman gold mines in the Alps and Spain. As easily-reached deposits ran out, humans delved deeper with advanced mining techniques developing apace.

I saw an interesting question once that asked if the human race could reattain our modern world if every bit of our technology and advances were stripped away - essentially putting us back into the stone age overnight. The sad answer is probably not, since we would no longer have the technological means to get enough coal, oil, and ores to reignite the industrial revolution since all of the surface deposits are long gone.

edit for sources: Any book on the ancient Greeks will talk about the mines of Laurium, Kitto and Martin are decent short survey texts on the subject. Strabo included such things in his Geographica as did Pliny's Naturalis Historia, and Braudel mentioned the discovery of Roman mines in the Alps in his The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip
II, vol. I. Hamblin's Warfare in Ancient Near East discusses the technological change between the neolithic and bronze ages. Here's also the wiki link to a gold mine that's been worked since before the Romans. Note the relatively advanced method they employed for following the veins.

I have actual copies. I bought Inalcık's book shortly after he published it (thanks to recommendation by a friend interested in Ottoman history) along with his older Ottoman Classical Age. I actually have many books from Inalcık including two he only published in Turkish . As for Braudel I don't remember.

https://www.amazon.com/Mediterranean-World-Age-Philip-Vol/dp/0520203089/ref=la_B000AQ3IK8_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481726129&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Social-History-Ottoman-Empire/dp/0521574560/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481726108&sr=1-2&refinements=p_27%3AHalil+Inalcik

You can buy them from here.