The Bullion Famine led to the need for an alternate way of acquiring silver. In 1448, new silver mines at Schneeberg, Saxony and Schwaz, Tyrol were explored to fulfill the skyrocketing demand for silver. In 1451, a new process known as liquation was discovered which allowed the silver-rich copper of Central Europe to be separated into silver and copper, and by the late 1450s, Martin Claus of Gotha found a solution to the problem of flooding silver mines in Saxony. The old mines quickly re-opened, and new discoveries were made in the Harz Mountains (the Erzgebirge). Old silver mines including those in Kutná Hora, Freiberg, and Rammelsberg resumed full-scale operation. The boom of silver-copper mining started in the 1460s and peaked in 1540 in Central Europe.