Lavrion was an important silver mining district in the ancient world, exploited almost continuously from the fourth millennium BC. Its mining history is central to understanding the availability of silver, lead and copper in Greece and the Aegean through the Bronze age. This history is also relevant to the phenomenal rise of Athens in the 5th century BC. Our reassessment of the mineralisation and ancient mining history at Lavrion provides a clearer understanding of its capacity to generate wealth and the scale of its impact on Athens. Integration of new geochemical and geological data with existing information has produced outcomes that help address these two issues. Foremost is the contrasting character of mineralisation at the upper 'first' and lower 'third' contacts and their marked differences in silver content, spatial distribution and supergene alteration. Discovery of the concealed, bonanza mineralisation of the third contact at Kamariza, possibly early in the 5th century BC, followed about 3000 years of mining, which appears to have been largely restricted to discontinuous, low-grade mineralisation at the first contact. Undoubtedly, this later discovery had enduring impacts on Lavrion and Athens, and it most likely funded the trireme fleet, which brought victory over the Persians at Salamis in 480 BC.

中文翻译：

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Lavrion 银区：重新评估其古老的采矿历史

Lavrion 是古代世界重要的银矿区，从公元前四千年开始几乎一直被开采。它的采矿历史对于了解青铜时代希腊和爱琴海的银、铅和铜的供应情况至关重要。这段历史也与公元前 5 世纪雅典的惊人崛起有关。我们对 Lavrion 的矿化和古代采矿历史进行了重新评估，可以更清楚地了解其创造财富的能力及其对雅典的影响规模。新的地球化学和地质数据与现有信息的整合产生了有助于解决这两个问题的结果。最重要的是上部“第一”和下部“第三”接触处矿化的对比特征及其银含量的显着差异，空间分布和表生改变。在大约 3000 年的采矿之后，在 Kamariza 的第三接触点发现了隐蔽的富矿矿化，可能是在公元前 5 世纪早期，在第一接触点似乎主要限于不连续的低品位矿化。毫无疑问，这个后来的发现对拉夫里翁和雅典产生了持久的影响，它很可能资助了三列舰队，这支舰队在公元前 480 年在萨拉米斯击败了波斯人。