Favor­able geo­graph­i­cal con­di­tions of mod­ern-day Kyiv region con­tributed to the ear­ly appear­ance of humans in this ter­ri­to­ry and the active devel­op­ment of its geo­log­i­cal resources. Archae­o­log­i­cal find­ings in Fas­tiv and the vil­lage of Dobranichiv­ka indi­cate that more than 12,000 years ago, prim­i­tive peo­ple already used stone tools and house­hold items made of gran­ite, quartzite, and sand­stone; they also pro­duced orna­ments from semi-pre­cious stones such as amber, chal­cedony, and quartz.

Dur­ing the Mesolith­ic and Neolith­ic peri­ods, more advanced stone tools appeared, includ­ing axes, drills, and adzes. The prac­tice of col­lect­ing stones from the Earth’s sur­face grad­u­al­ly evolved into their pur­pose­ful extrac­tion.

The Tryp­il­lian cul­ture (6th–3rd mil­len­nia BCE) is char­ac­ter­ized by the exten­sive use of clay for pot­tery pro­duc­tion. Clay and stone were also used by Tryp­il­lians for con­struct­ing dwellings. Stone extrac­tion was car­ried out using both hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal min­ing work­ings.

The geo­log­i­cal envi­ron­ment not only pro­vid­ed peo­ple with min­er­al raw mate­ri­als. For thou­sands of years, humans have also освоювали under­ground spaces and con­struct­ed defen­sive struc­tures.

Evi­dence of large-scale earth­works includes Scythi­an bur­ial mounds (kur­gans) and defen­sive struc­tures known as the Zmi­ievi Valy (“Serpent’s Walls”), dat­ed by var­i­ous sources to between the 1st mil­len­ni­um BCE and the 10th cen­tu­ry CE.

From the late 2nd cen­tu­ry BCE, iron became wide­ly used in every­day life, and the mass pro­duc­tion of iron goods began at the start of the 1st mil­len­ni­um BCE with the for­ma­tion of Scythi­an cul­ture. Iron was extract­ed from local ores such as brown iron ore, limonite, and bog iron.

The peri­od of Kyi­van Rus (10th–12th cen­turies CE) is char­ac­ter­ized by rapid devel­op­ment of con­struc­tion, as well as foundry, black­smithing, and jew­el­ry crafts. The high demand for iron for weapons and tools was met main­ly by bog iron ore, which was mined by sur­face meth­ods using shov­els and picks.

In the Kyiv region, many place names (toponyms) reflect min­er­al resources and the tra­di­tion­al crafts of local inhab­i­tants asso­ci­at­ed with them.

Thus, five vil­lages with­in the Polis­sia part of the region have the word “Rud­nia” in their names, which indi­cates that in the past iron was pro­duced here from bog iron ore. Of course, bog iron ores are no longer used for iron extrac­tion; how­ev­er, they are still uti­lized as a raw mate­r­i­al for min­er­al pig­ments.

The pres­ence of raw mate­ri­als for glass production—glass sands—is reflect­ed in place names con­tain­ing the word “Huta.” Two such vil­lages are locat­ed in the Vysh­horod dis­trict and one in the Bohuslav dis­trict. Oth­er toponyms such as Tor­fi­ane, Pisky, and Piskiv­ka also direct­ly indi­cate the pres­ence of cor­re­spond­ing min­er­al resources.In gen­er­al, these place names reflect the min­er­al-resource base of the Kyiv region, a major share of which con­sists of raw mate­ri­als for con­struc­tion mate­ri­als and peat.

Today, there are 230 reg­is­tered deposits of 20 dif­fer­ent types of min­er­al resources in Kyiv region, of which only 106 are being developed.If you are inter­est­ed in devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties or have oth­er sub­soil-use ques­tions, the Insti­tute of Geol­o­gy can pro­vide pro­fes­sion­al assis­tance. The list of ser­vices we pro­vide can be found at here. Our con­sul­ta­tions are FREE.