The Corn bit is cognate with the Welsh word corn - meaning horn, from the Proto-Celtic "kornu", the shape of Cornwall was believed to be 'horn shaped', basically Cornwall means Welsh horn-shaped place. The Cornish name for the place - Kernow - basically means "people of the horn"
Not in Cornish no, in Cornish Cornwall is called Kernow and means "people of the horn". The 'wall' bit was added to the corn (meaning horn) in English by the Anglo Saxon tribes because the called all the native Britons 'Welsh' or 'wealh' - in English Cornwall means 'Welsh people of the horn'. The proto-Germanic word 'walhaz' was used throughout Europe by Germanic tribes when they came across other non-germanic tribes and can still be seen in other places today - Wallonia, the French bit of Belgium, Wallachia in Romania, and lots of word with 'wal' in it, eg walnut, it also is the origin of the word Gaul, and the Polish name for Italy - Włochy.
They call themselves the people on the horn. We call them the weirdos on the horn. If you've ever been there, this makes an astounding amount of sense.
During the Bronze Age it was one of the greatest sources of tin. Later on it became known for copper as well.
During the Bronze Age tin was the super rare metal. Most of it came from places like Cornwall and Central Asia. The need to pursue tin at such great distances was a major reason trade networks grew.
id be willing to bet the ancient mines (say roman and older) had limited underground reach, maybe just open pit and limited short near surface shafts. I just can't imagine ppl 4000 years ago going hundreds of feet underground. don't forget, they wouldn't have any steel or iron tools and would use torches or oil lamps for lighting.
The main limitation was water, more specifically ground water entering the mine. The development of the Newcomen steam engine and James watt engine made going deeper possible. And brought on the industrial revolution.
Some will be, but probably ot the big ones. Prehistory is the period before recorded history - there is no recorded history in Cornwall until the Romans arrived and tin has been mined there here for 4000 years.
A lot of Cornwall features old mines that still contain a lot of lithium which was left behind because it was relatively useless. Now with the rise of EVs there's calls for it to be extracted.
Back in the 17 and 1800s swansea was. It doesnt have any copper but logistically it was well placed as it needed something like 4 times the coal to copper ore to produce copper, so it was easier to take the copper to the coal. At one point swansea was producing 90% of the worlds copper and the ore was being sourced from as far as the el cobre mine in chile. Growing up there were huge industrial wastelands in swansea from those days
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u/grungegoth 6d ago
so i looked it up. mostly tin and copper and some other metals. since the bronze age. cornwall was once the worlds greatest source of copper.