How gold is mined in different countries - in past centuries and now

How is gold mined? Even those who have never had anything to do with such a craft are interested in this issue. It should be noted that there is not so much precious metal on our planet; its production does not exceed 1 thousand tons per year. Gold mining itself began a little over 6.5 thousand years ago.

The first gold products were found on the territory of Bulgaria and dated back to 4500 thousand BC. e. Such a short mining history allowed humanity to replenish its reserves of this metal by only 168.9 thousand tons.

Mined gold bars

Ancient Egypt - the first mass mining of gold

Obviously, man began the first gold mining about six thousand years ago. It was mined in the form of nuggets and flakes from the gravel beds of rivers and streams in Asia Minor (the territory of modern Turkey) and Central Asia (wholly or partially the territory of the modern Republic of Tuva, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan).

Around this time or slightly later, the Egyptians began to extract gold from the sands along the Nile in Egypt and Nubia (modern Sudan) and on the plateau east of the Nile along the Red Sea. In the plateau deposits, gold was first recovered from surface weathered rocks and then from shafts and tunnels that sometimes went up to 100 meters below the surface.

Quite interesting is the fact that in the 20th century these territories were thoroughly explored by modern geologists. It turned out that the ancient Egyptians mined almost all the gold there. Not a single deposit remained untouched by the ancient gold miners, and all significant deposits were completely worked out.

The Egyptians probably also mined gold in other places in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

In any case, Egypt was the source of most of the gold in the ancient Mediterranean until the rise of Greece.

Ukraine

There are many ore occurrences known on the territory of Ukraine. According to the State Committee for Geology, more than two hundred such places have been explored. Reserves of 10 of them are estimated from 80 to 135 tons each. The total weight of all deposits is about 3200 tons. The largest deposits are scattered throughout the country: Transcarpathia: Muzhievskoye and Saulyak, Kirovograd region: Yuryevskoye, Dnepropetrovsk region: Balka Shirokaya, Zolotaya Balka, Sergeevskoye, Klintsovskoye and Mayskoye fields. With independence, prestige became an incentive, so that in addition to missiles and planes, we would have our own gold. However, the first ingot was obtained from missile parts removed from combat duty. It was founded in 1996, but due to hardware intrigues, it did not receive the necessary financial support. A little over a year later, the company was liquidated after conducting 4 comprehensive audits. Then, after a couple of quarters, the State Joint Stock Company was organized, which began production. All information from geologists about gold deposits was transferred to the authorized fund. The State Property Fund transferred to the authorized capital state blocks of shares of many mining and processing plants and other enterprises: shares of Poltava Mining and Processing Plant (35.86% of the authorized capital), Ordzhonikidze Mining and Processing Plant (26%), Marganets Mining and Processing Plant (26.08%) and Ukrtsink, all property assets of the state-owned Irshansky and Volnogorsk mining and processing plants, jewelry, Lvov, Vinnitsa "Crystal", as well as Kalush "Shakhtostroy". With this approach, gold mining in Ukraine could exceed a ton per year, experts have long argued. However, the main obstacle is the huge investment required to develop the industry, which far exceeds the possible profit from gold mining. Russian gold and its mining, of course, also require huge investments, but the situation is no longer as critical as it was after the collapse of the USSR, the industry is reviving at a very good pace. One of the aspects hindering development is the enormous environmental damage caused by various technologies, for example, in gold mining in Siberia. The fact is that most of the rich deposits are difficult to mine; here they will have to be mined not by washing, like rich placers, but by amalgamation, chlorination or cyanide, which, given the dense population in Ukraine, is fraught with terrible environmental consequences. They say that in Soviet times it was precisely because of this that they abandoned the development of gold mining, since protecting the population from industrial poisons would cost more than the mined gold.

Alexander the Great and the gold of Ancient Greece

Despite the fact that the Greeks themselves mined gold in Macedonia and Western Thrace, it was still quite scarce until 331 BC. Alexander the Great did not conquer the Persian Empire. In the capital of Persia, the city of Susa, the royal treasury was seized. More than 300 tons of gold were transported to Greece. Alexander's subsequent conquests also brought Greece a lot of gold.

In their own gold developments, the Greeks improved methods of exploration of deposits and methods of supplying water flows to ensure the washing of gold-bearing rocks. They used heating and rapid cooling technology to break down hard ores and rocks.

The rise of gold mining in the Roman Empire

About a century after the Second Punic War (218 – 201 BC), the Romans began to exploit gold and silver deposits in Spain that had previously belonged to Carthage. They improved underground construction techniques and mining methods, developed more efficient ways to pump and manage groundwater, and improved sluices. The Romans also invented and used a hydromonitor - a high-pressure water jet, which was used to break up dense gold-bearing rocks of the terraces. Hydraulic monitors are widely used in gold mining today.

To mine gold in Spain, the Romans used arrugia - complex mining operations. To build an arrugia, Roman geologists looked for a suitable piece of land with gold-bearing rock, usually a hill. Next, slaves dug parallel tunnels under its surface. A dam was built above the hill, where water was diverted from the nearest river or several rivers. Below, water outlets were built - agoge, the bottom of which was covered with bundles of gorse (thorny bush). At some point, the tunnels under the hill collapsed. Then the sluices were opened and within a few hours the water completely washed out and crushed the huge mass of rock and carried it away along the outlets. The contents of the agoge were thoroughly washed. Bundles of gorse with particles of gold deposited on them were carefully collected and burned, obtaining pure gold. In this way, a huge amount of gold was mined for that time.

Also, the Romans used advanced smelting technologies that allowed them to extract gold from complex sulfide ores.

By the beginning of the Christian era (4th century), gold production in the Roman Empire (including Asia Minor, Central Europe, France, Spain and Thrace) was 8 tons per year.

With the exception of free gold miners in the Southern Urals, Central Asian countries and some hired workers in the Roman era, most workers in the ancient world were prisoners of war, criminals and slaves. They were ruthlessly exploited and almost literally “worked to death.” Slave labor was very cheap, so the efficiency of gold mining was low. Often, less than 1 g of pure gold per ton of rock was mined from gold-quartz deposits, although the Romans were able to extract up to 15 g of gold per ton of rock from sulfide and tellurium-bearing deposits.

Areas of application

According to statistics, almost all reserves of the extracted substance are used as gold reserves, which are listed on the balance sheet of the state. Most are kept in commercial banks as deposits and investments. A certain percentage is owned by private individuals who mine or collect jewelry, antiques or money. Only 10% of the total amount is used in industry to create equipment, clothing, furniture and other general consumer items.

If we take electrical engineering, gold is used to make an insulating coating for contacts, inputs and connectors, and is also used as solder. Many metals can be carefully gold-plated to protect against corrosion and bacterial damage. This substance is also considered a food additive, so it can be used in the food industry.

If someone didn’t know, then you can’t do without this substance even when creating ordinary glasses. A thin film is made from it, which is a protective layer against infrared radiation. And if an electric charge is passed through this film, the glass will acquire useful anti-fog characteristics. Such glass is used to create ships, cars, aircraft, steam locomotives and other vehicles.

The substance is also used to make dentures for teeth, as well as crowns. It is added to some medications. The material can be found in many cosmetic products that are designed to rejuvenate and improve skin condition. But, as already mentioned, most of the money is spent on creating jewelry, which may differ in size, shape, quality, purpose and cost.

The description provided in this article will help you learn about the characteristics and properties of the valuable mineral gold.

Dark Ages and Middle Ages. "Golden Hunger"

After the collapse of the Roman Empire and the onset of the Dark Ages (from the 5th to the 11th centuries), as a result of general decline, gold production decreased significantly, and the number of mining sites was reduced. Many of the known mines were depleted, and the loss of groundwater control technologies limited the depth of underground workings. Gold and silver became scarce in the Western world.

Total gold production during the Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries) is estimated to be no more than 3.1 tons per year, which is about 40% of gold production at the end of the Roman Empire.

By the mid-14th century, production increased to 7.8 tons per year due to the discovery of gold deposits in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Silesia. However, these sources were depleted by the end of the century and a long period of “gold famine” began.

In the 15th century, the Portuguese established colonies in Africa and began shipping gold, first from Guinea and then from the Gold Coast (Ghana). However, gold continued to be an extremely scarce material.

New technologies

Nowadays, technology has advanced significantly. Gold mining is carried out by heap leaching (HL). This technology allows mining from poor ores, from small deposits, and developing off-balance ores. One year is enough to introduce a new technology, which is very acceptable for private gold mining and is an excellent investment. In a year you will have gold bars as an output. Moreover, you will spend less money per kilogram of gold mining than using traditional factory technology. Heap leaching technology involves the following stages of the production process :

Preparation of ore material: it is crushed in mills, passed through a system of sieves (screening), and pelletizing is carried out so that the ore does not stick together into large fractions;
Formation of an ore stack;
Leaching ore with cyanide solution (very toxic stage);
Extraction of heavy metals (mainly gold) from ore by sorption using activated carbon or ion exchange resin, another option is using metal zinc by cementation;
Obtaining deposits on the cathode or zinc deposits containing gold in a galvanic bath;
Obtaining alloy alloy after melting sediments;
Leaching of ore residues (so-called tailings) and reclamation of the land where the rock was taken.

One of the developers of this technology is the Irgiredmet Institute. We started developing equipment for gold mining 40 years ago. The technology was first used in 1991 at the Vasilkovsky GOK in Kazakhstan.

Then, in 1994, it was developed in Russia at ZAO Zolotaya Zvezda (Zolotaya Zvezda) (Maiskoye deposit). Then more than 35 installations were implemented in the northern territories: Yakutia, Amur and Chita regions, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Northern Urals. This procedure for obtaining gold is already used in forty deposits.

America's Gold

After Columbus discovered America in the 16th century, the situation changed dramatically. It is estimated that the looting of the treasures of the South American Indians in 1530 brought about 8 tons of gold. After establishing colonies and opening mines in Mexico and South America, Spain was receiving more than 4 tons of gold per year in the 1550s.

According to various estimates, during the 16th century Spain received from its American colonies between 154 and 311 tons of gold, which is approximately 40% of the gold mined worldwide during this period.

Gold mining in the 17th century. First gold rush

By the mid-17th century, world gold production was about 8 tons per year. Most of the gold was mined in America.

At the end of the 17th century, gold was discovered in the southern part of Brazil, in the Ouro Preto region. This event led to the world's first gold rush .

.
This gold rush was also the largest in history .
More than 400 thousand miners arrived in the area where gold was discovered, and more than 1 million slaves were brought from Africa. By the end of the 17th century, world gold production was about 11 tons per year.

Gold mining in the 20th century and today

The 20th century has seen rapid, sustained growth in gold production to levels unimaginable in earlier times.

Of all the gold ever mined in the world, more than 80% was obtained in the 20th and 21st centuries. And half of the production in the entire history of mankind is gold, obtained from 1960 to the present.

Many new rich deposits have been discovered around the world, and the efficiency of existing ones has been greatly increased through improved mining technologies and general developments in technology. The widespread use of froth flotation methods in metallurgical ore processing and the development of cyanide heap leaching of gold from ore led to the emergence in the 1970s of economically feasible methods for extracting gold from a wide range of ore types.

A 69% increase in the price of gold in 1934 (officially in the US, but actually throughout the world) created enormous economic interest in gold mining that continued until the outbreak of World War II.

After the war, South Africa's gold production, which had dominated for a century, resumed its steep climb in the 1950s, peaking in 1970 with 1,000 tonnes of gold produced. Since South Africa had to extract gold from very hard, dense ore at depths of up to 4.5 km, they pioneered the use of technology and equipment to mine under extreme temperatures, humidity and lithostatic pressure.

Gold production in the former Soviet Union began to rise in the 1950s and peaked in 1990, when 302 tons were mined.

Gold production in most other countries changed little in the 35 years after the end of World War II. However, by 1980, the situation had changed due to the increased demand and price of gold, as well as the development of cyanide heap leaching technology, which made it possible to obtain gold from low-grade ores. This led to increased interest in gold mining around the world and especially in Canada, where the exploitation of deposits of Precambrian greenstone complexes began.

Gold production in South Africa, on the contrary, began to decline after 1970, as more difficult mining conditions increased production costs, and new socio-political conditions (the abolition of the apartheid regime) sharply increased labor costs. In 2007, South Africa lost first place in gold production to China, and in 2012 it dropped to 5th place. Compared to 1970, production has now decreased by almost 80%.

From 2007 to the present, China has remained the world leader in gold mining. The entire volume of mined gold is used for the needs of its rapidly developing economy. In addition, China continues to import gold.

In total, according to rough estimates, 160 thousand tons of gold have been mined in the entire history of mankind . This quantity can be represented as a cube with a side of 20 meters, i.e. the height of a six-story building. About two-thirds of this amount comes from just 5 countries:

South Africa - 34%

USSR (with its member states) – 11%

USA – 10%

Australia – 7%

Canada – 6%

However, in a few years the situation may change, since more than 100 countries have already announced gold mining on their territory.

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Historical information

The first deposits in Russia were discovered in the 18th century. This fact is associated with a situation where one worker found what he thought was the most ordinary stone in the Yekaterinburg district. He reported the discovery to an employee of the Office of the main plant of this city. The worker then continued excavating the area where he found the first element. The minerals contained small grains that looked like gold. Later this deposit was called Initial.

Back in the 5th century, places in Russia were identified where it was already possible to extract gold. Historians have noted the mountain systems of the Urals, because the peoples living in this territory had jewelry made of precious material. The search for new places began only in 1719, after the decree of Peter the Great. And already in the first half of the 19th century, Russia was recognized as a leader in the extraction of minerals.

Over time, technologies developed that made it possible to move from the Ural Mountains to Western Siberia. After the Witte reform, the first coins were minted from precious substances, and the mines became available to foreign miners. At the beginning of the 21st century, there were already about 5,800 gold deposits in the Russian Federation.