The city of Johannesburg located in South Africa was founded as a result of the Witwatersrand Gold Rush which resulted in the discovery of some of the largest gold deposits the world has ever seen. Gold fields located within the basin in the Free State and Gauteng provinces widely in strike and dip requiring some of the deepest mines in the world, with the Savuka and TauTona mines currently deepest gold mine in the world at 3,777 m. The Second Boer War of 1899-1901 between the British Empire and the Afrikaner Boers was at least partly over the rights of miners and gold gaining wealth in South Africa.
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| The entrance to an underground gold mine in Victoria, Australia |
Other major producers are the United States, Australia, Russia and Peru. Mines in South Dakota and Nevada supply two-thirds of gold used in the United States. In South America, the controversial project Pascua Lama aims at exploitation of rich fields in the high mountains of Atacama Desert, at the border between Chile and Argentina. Today about one-quarter of the world gold output is estimated to originate from artisanal or small scale of mining.
Since the 1880s, South Africa was the source for a large proportion of the world's gold supply, with about 50% of all gold ever produced to be from South Africa. Production in 1970 accounted for 79% of world supply, which produces about 1,480 tonnes. Production for 2008 was 2,260 tonnes. In 2007 China (with 276 tonnes) overtook South Africa as the world's largest gold producer, the first time since 1905 that South Africa is not the greatest.
At the end of 2009, it is estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 165,000 tonnes. Be represented by a cube with an edge length of about 20.28 meters. At $ 1600 per ounce, 165,000 metric tons of gold would have a value of $ 8.8 trillion.
Source: Wikipedia
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