At 2.7 Billion Years Old, This Geological Titan Holds 40% of All Gold Ever Mined and Still Has Half a Trillion Dollars Left

By Evelyn Hart – Indian Defence Review

Buried under an ordinary stretch of South African hillside lies a geological secret so vast it supplied nearly half of all the gold humanity has ever pulled from the Earth.

South Africa’s Witwatersrand Basin, a sedimentary geological formation outside Johannesburg, has produced more gold than any other region on Earth. Geological surveys and mining records show it accounts for roughly 40 percent of all the gold ever extracted by humans, more than 1.6 billion ounces, since its discovery in 1886.