Here's another one for the list, apologies if you guys have discussed it
before - I haven't had time to comb the list archives yet.

After the fall of civilisation on the Ringworld, where do the less advanced,
non-spacefaring cultures, get their metals? I see two possibilities - either
they scavenge them from city builder ruins and the remains of previous
advanced cultures or they mine them on the Ringworld. Both possibilities
raise interesting questions.

If the only source of metals is scavenging from the ruins, then tools and
metal artefacts would become valuable and increasingly rare over time as
there's a limited supply. Also, electronics and similar industries require
conductive metals like copper and gold which I presume couldn't be found in
Citybuilder ruins as they used super conductor.

If newer cultures are mining metal ores and smelting and working the metals
from Ringworld sources, then this metal must have been in the rock used to
line the inner surface (and therefore proof that this material was not
created by matter transmutation, as hindmost once believed). Also, finding
and mining ores would be different than on a natural world. On Earth, metals
are found by geologists recognising the types of rocks likely to bear
certain metal ores - on the Ringworld these natural signposts won't be
there, so prospecting for ore must be more difficult with no natural
signposts and such a vast area of bedrock to be searched.

This has been bothering me for a while, anyone have any thoughts on this?

John