The Most Important Gold Mine

More gold has been mined out of this 300 kilometer long band of earth than anywhere else in the world. Take a bulldozer, scoop out two tons of dirt, and one of these would come with it. 20 years after it had been found digging just 50ft into the surface, it had produced 2% of all the gold humans had ever mined. Fast forward to today, and 22% of all the gold ever pulled out of the Earth by humans has come from Witwatersrand, the one area on Earth where a seven mile wide meteor had struck the ground so hard and so fast it dug up earth from miles beneath.

At least twice as productive as almost every other gold mine on the planet. As this stretch of land goes, so goes gold production. What was 50ft from the surface in 1989 is now a two hour round trip, ten mile journey in a high speed elevator, winding all the way to the bottom two and a half miles beneath the surface, where now eight scoops of air must come up to get to one of these. What was almost pure profit to start Now most of this gold bar goes just to paying the cost of getting the dirt. It came from up and out of the bottom of the mine. And that is from the most important, most profitable gold mine on the planet.