Researchers from the Universidad de Chile found the 40-yard trench near the coastal town of Taltal in northern Chile.

It was dug by the Huentelauquen people, the first settlers in the region, who used iron oxide as pigment for painted stone and bone instruments, and probably also for clothing and body paint, a study article published in Current Anthropology said.

The duration and extent of the operation shows surprising cultural complexity in these ancient people, researchers said.

"It shows that [mining] was a labor-intensive activity demanding specific technical skills and some level of social cooperation transmitted through generations," the university's Diego Salazar and his team said in the article.

An estimated 24,000 cubic feet and 2,000 tons of rock were extracted from the mine, used continuously from around 12,000 years ago to 10,500 years ago, the study found.

"The regular exploitation of [the site] for more than a millennium ... indicates that knowledge about the location of the mine, the properties of its iron oxides, and the techniques required to exploit and process these minerals were transmitted over generations within the Huentelauquen Cultural Complex, thereby consolidating the first mining tradition yet known in America," the researchers wrote.

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