Zawar

Zawar is a mining area about 40 km south of Udaipur in Rajasthan and one of the oldest known centres of zinc production in the world. Mining there goes back more than two thousand years, and by the medieval period its smelters were distilling metallic zinc in clay retorts on a large scale, centuries before the process was known in Europe. The mines continued under the maharanas of Mewar and are still worked today.