314 



UNITED STATES MINERAL RESOURCES 



was commonly recovered with silver and used in- 

 creasingly by the Egyptians, Cretans, Babylonians, 

 and other ancient people in castings, as pottery 

 glaze, as sheets and solder, and as an additive to 

 bronze. In 2000 B.C. the Chinese were using lead 

 coinage, and about the same time the Babylonians 

 were employing soldered lead sheets as roofing for 

 temples and public buildings among other uses. 

 Some of this lead was probably obtained in trade 

 with the Hittites in Asia Minor, who had discov- 

 ered the technique of smelting iron. By about 1600 

 B.C., the Phoenicians, who established a farflung 

 commerce in many commodities, had developed lead 

 mines in Cyprus, Greece, Sardinia, and Spain. The 

 ancient Britons bartered lead ores for products of 

 the East brought by the Phoenician seafarers, and 

 this trade was maintained and expanded with the 

 Carthaginians and other seafarers who succeeded 

 them. 



Lead was used extensively by the Greeks and 

 Romans. The mines of Laurium, near Athens, among 

 others, supplied the Greeks with silver to finance 

 their wars and with lead for construction of their 

 cities. The segments, or "drums," of the fluted col- 

 umns that characterize Greek architecture are 

 pinned together by iron rods fitted into sockets that 

 were filled with molten lead. Lead was also used for 

 slip-joint pipes that are remarkably similar to mod- 

 ern soil pipe and was used in coinage, in the pro- 

 duction of bronze, and in the arts. Lead compounds 

 were widely used as pigments and cosmetics by both 

 the Romans and the Greeks and in ointments and 

 salves. The Romans extended the mining of argen- 

 tiferous lead ores into Yugoslavia, Rumania, France, 

 Belgium, and Turkey, chiefly in a search for ever- 

 greater amounts of silver to finance their conquests 

 and enrich Rome. Traces of Roman mining activi- 

 ties are still evident in these countries as well as in 

 Italy, Sardinia, and Spain, where lead objects are 

 occasionally found during the course of modern 

 mining and archaeological activities. In Britain, for 

 example, lead pipes of the Roman era still carry 

 water at the hot-spring area of Bath. 



Many of the mines that were originally developed 

 in all of those countries by the Phoenicians and 

 Romans as well as other mines developed in Ger- 

 many during the Dark Ages after the collapse of 

 the Roman Empire are still important sources of 

 lead in modern world trade and technology. 



MODERN USES 

 In the present industrial economy of the world, 

 lead is the fifth-ranking metal of trade and con- 

 sumption after iron and steel, aluminum, copper. 



and zinc. Of the total world mine production in 

 1969, 3,523,401 short tons (table 63), the United 



Table 63. — World mine production of lead in 1969, by 

 countries 



rNA. not available. Data from U.S. Bureau of Mines Minerals Yearbook, 

 1971] 



Short tOTia 



North America: „„„ „oh 



Canada 330,781 



Guatemala ikoH 



Honduras iqq'I^q 



Mexico ,i„^'„To 



United States 509,013 



South America: 



Argentina 35,000 



Bolivia °27,819 



Brazil 30,416 



Chile 906 



Colombia , „„ f 51 



Peru '179,592 



Europe : 



Austria ^,500 



Bulgaria '90,940 



Czechoslovakia o.""" 



Finland 5,019 



France '33,400 



Germany: eionnn 



East 13,000 



West „'^?o 



Greece 9,458 



Ireland":: :63,700 



Italy '39700 



Norway ^>»"" 



Poland 54-000 



Portugal e-.Hnn 



Roumania 44 000 



Sweden - '^9,000 



K^.-:::::::::::::::::::: 490,000 



United Kingdom ^ot'thk 



Yugoslavia 135,600 



Algeria exTA^°° 



Congo (Brazzaville) ^,^000 



Morocco n,ii6^ 



Nigeria "Taaail 



Southwest Africa -^f'tit 



Tunisia I 16,500 



Zambia 25,350 



^''''Burma "9,900 



China, mainland '-^^o'qqo 



India ::::::::::::: .26;4oo 



Sn":::::::::::::::: 70,037 



^"■^nU "5^.000 



South 18,163 



Philippines „ 'j 



Thailand t'Y,^ 



Turkey 2,440 



°" Ai^iralia _^^^^ 



Total (listed figures only) 3,523,401 



« Estimated. 



1 Recoverable. 



2 Smelter production. 



States production was 509,013 short tons, or 14.4 

 percent. In contrast, the consumption in the United 

 States of lead from all sources, including scrap, was 



