6. Almost half of all the gold mined in history is from the Witwatersrand Basin, South Africa
Africa’s attraction to the colonial nations of the past, and nations looking to raise their GDP through trade deals today, is due to its bountiful natural resources. From precious metals to sugar, Africa has been singly blessed with things that other people want. As illustration, just think of the Witwatersrand Basin, South Africa. It is the largest gold deposit in the world, and the gold rush it inspired in 1886 led to the foundation of Johannesburg. Despite only being discovered 132 years ago, almost half of all the gold ever mined in the history of the world comes from Witwatersrand.
Once you’ve picked your jaw up from the floor, here are some more facts. Witwatersrand has yielded over 2 billion ounces of gold since 1886, and has an estimated 1.161 billion ounces remaining. To whittle out the remaining supply, mine shafts have been sunk 3, 900 metres below the earth’s surface, and it is extremely dangerous work. It is hard to quantify how long the rest will last (even assuming that the geologists’ predictions are correct), but it certainly won’t be anywhere near as long as the hundreds of millions of years it took for the gold to form.
