system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
eli5 How did people get iron or other metals in 9th century. Did they extract metals from wherever we do now ?
gpt
Mining metals has been known since likely prehistory in many areas. In both Europe and Asia, from about 5000-6000 years ago there were thriving mining operations and trade network for metals. 

By the time frame you ask for, Europe and Asia were filled with iron mines and iron would have been traded widely. 

Or in short, yup, they mined it. 

That said, there were areas that were not mining  iron, such as the americas, Australia, the South Pacific, parts of Africa.

If you’re specifically asking if they mine from the exact same deposits we do now, mines eventually go dry or aren’t reasonable to extract more ore, so the answer can be both yes or no depending on the mine, and modern techniques allow us to mine metals in ways that never would have been achieved by earlier people. 

Add to that, a lot of the industrial revolutions early start is a result of finding better ways to mine (both coal and metals) which resulted in some early steam powered industrial engines (to pump water out of mines)