What could prevent concentrated local exploration?
In my world there is a village with a hot spring, the only one on the entire island.
The spring emerges from a local cave which has been filled / caved in by a past civilisation, since the water is secretly heated by engineered means.
The spring has been hot since neolithic times, but thousands of years later the inhabiting nation becomes gripped with a frenzy of curiosity and exploration. They have all the means of current technology apart from non-intrusive imaging (such as sonar or X-ray).
What could prevent them from exploring the source of the spring, ideally without raising much attention?
Edit: The technology is of magical nature and should be nigh undetectable by default.
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The spring emerges from a local cave which has been filled / caved in by a past civilisation, since the water is secretly heated by engineered means.
Any society that can create engineering that lasts thousands of years, is probably capable of covering up the the cave so it looks like (and in fact is) solid rock.
As far as the locals are concerned, this is one enormous rock with a hot spring bubbling up somewhere inside it and an outlet for the water.
The only way to see the source is to go in through the outlet. Aside from blowing up the cave (or drilling holes with an unknown outcome, something that would be very difficult in a large mountain), there's no other way to get inside.
Make sure there are multiple outlets, each one much too small for a diver. While they flow to the same pond or creek, they can not be enlarged/merged without seriously damaging the entire cave structure.
Hanging Lake waterfall, Colorado USA
Our current technology includes swimming robot/drone cameras or cameras on the end of a flexible stick (like what are currently used for checking out house sewer drains). To preclude those being successful, make sure the water outlet path is quite convoluted with narrow jagged turns no GoPro can manage. An additional deterrent could be rock with metal throughout it that interferes with wireless communication. Any robots sent through would get lost or perhaps even fried.
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