I started writing a story and got distracted before I'd finished the first sentence. I wanted somebody to start a story by looking at a shiny piece of coal.
There has been tin mining in Cornwall and adjacent areas since prehistoric times. Meanwhile, South Wales is a historic source of coal. The distance between them is maybe 150 miles or so.
I don't think the same mountains would yield both tin and coal, but a granitic ridge might stand but a few days' travel from coal-bearing hills -- or peat bogs, for that matter.
I think that's the problem I'm having. The western range, at least, is a young chain growing where two plates collide, much like the Rockies.
I think the most likely place of accessible coal for humans would be along the ridges of the northern range (the one that separates the humans from the dwarves/beast-kings).
World-building is so much easier when you don't know any science. In that case, you can throw things together any old way.
Tin is found in some quantity in Idaho and Montana. Basically, if you can imagine gold or silver being mined in a given area, you can imagine tin. Not that tin is necessarily found in company with those, but all three are found -- as you point out -- in granitic areas.
What you have to keep in mind is that tin and coal deposits formed not only in different ways, but at different times. Not all your geographic features are peer-related.
Hmm... so, an area with lots of uplift might have a couple of strata with coal and an ore bearing strata either above or beneath, depending on geologic history. All might be available for use, but probably not at the same town - what's available for surface mining in one area is probably still buried or already eroded in another.
I found in my search that tin is often mined after it's been eroded, anyway. It tends to accumulate in river deltas.
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I don't think the same mountains would yield both tin and coal, but a granitic ridge might stand but a few days' travel from coal-bearing hills -- or peat bogs, for that matter.
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I think the most likely place of accessible coal for humans would be along the ridges of the northern range (the one that separates the humans from the dwarves/beast-kings).
World-building is so much easier when you don't know any science. In that case, you can throw things together any old way.
Reply
Tin is found in some quantity in Idaho and Montana. Basically, if you can imagine gold or silver being mined in a given area, you can imagine tin. Not that tin is necessarily found in company with those, but all three are found -- as you point out -- in granitic areas.
What you have to keep in mind is that tin and coal deposits formed not only in different ways, but at different times. Not all your geographic features are peer-related.
Reply
I found in my search that tin is often mined after it's been eroded, anyway. It tends to accumulate in river deltas.
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