The ancient miners were not wandering randomly through the dark.

They were following specific routes to specific destinations — passages where mineral deposits were particularly rich or particularly accessible, routes that they or their predecessors had established and then passed on through whatever combination of direct instruction and personal experience the knowledge transmission of their communities employed.

The organization of the mining operation implies something about the social structure of the communities that conducted it.

Mining expeditions of the kind that the evidence suggests — multiple people entering the cave together, carrying supplies and tools, working for extended periods and then returning to the surface — require planning, coordination, and logistics.