Nearby, visible from the tour trail, is a rock slab with ancient artifacts positioned on it: a gourd bowl, remnants of cane reed torches.

This cache — materials left by ancient miners and preserved by the cave for over two millennia — sits at the edge of the tour route as one of the most direct material connections between the modern visitor and the ancient human presence inside the cave.

Further along the route, visitors pass areas where the gypsum formations are visible — the crusts and flowers and snowball formations that are the same materials the ancient miners scraped from these walls.

The formations that exist today may not be the specific spots where the heaviest ancient mining occurred — those areas were progressively depleted — but they are the same mineral in the same geological context, produced by the same processes that have been operating in the cave for millions of years.