Another possibility involves changes in the availability or accessibility of the minerals.

As mining continued for centuries, the most accessible mineral-bearing surfaces — those nearest the cave entrances, those easiest to reach with the tools available — would have been progressively depleted.

If reaching fresh, unworked mineral surfaces required going ever deeper, the cost-benefit calculation of mining might have shifted unfavorably.

A third possibility involves population shifts or disruptions in the communities that conducted the mining.

If the specific communities who knew the cave’s routes and conducted the mining dispersed, moved, or were absorbed into other communities, the specific knowledge of the cave might have been lost or devalued.