#witwatersrand

[whencyclopedia]

Witwatersrand Gold & the Creation of South Africa

The colonial authorities responded to the news of the gold find at Witwatersrand by sending surveyors to choose a suitable nearby site where the inevitable influx of gold prospectors from all over the world could live. The site chosen would eventually become the great city of Johannesburg. Within a decade, the young town boasted 100,000 inhabitants, and by 1900, this figure had risen to 166,000. Johannesburg became the largest African city south of the Sahara. It was a wild place in the early days where the spending was as loose as the morals. One contemporary described Johannesburg as “Monte Carlo imposed on Sodom and Gomorrah” (Jackson, 14).

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⇒ Witwatersrand Gold & the Creation of South Africa

[wtf-fun-factss]

A gold rush in South Africa was bigger than the one in California. Click to read the full fact.

[geologyjohnson]

This is 3.2 billion year old sandstone from the Kapvaal craton in South Africa. It was deposited by rivers on the coast of one of the first continents when the world was so different it might as well have been an alien planet. The black wiggly lines and layers are alleged to be microbial mats living on the ancient beach. In a few months I will be going to South Africa to collect my own samples so that I can try to figure out if these really are microbial fossils and some of the earliest evidence of life on earth. Not only that, we will then use that data to help a robot on Mars look for cool martian sedimentary rocks, and maybe some martian fossils. But that's a long way off.

[thunderstruck9]

William Kentridge (South African, b. 1955), Untitled (Witwatersrand landscape), 1988. Charcoal and pastel on paper, 125 x 98 cm.

[dreamsofrealitybyclara]

[trolledu]

Nearly half of all the gold ever mined comes from one place: South Africa’s Witwatersrand Basin. Discovered in 1886, this legendary deposit fueled global gold markets for over a century. Stretching 350 km, its rich layers of gold-bearing rock made South Africa the world’s top gold producer, leaving a legacy that still fascinates geologists and treasure hunters alike.

[trolledu]

I was co-teaching a speaking lesson with Rueben, one of Trolleng's South African teachers, and at one point we started discussing the currencies of Poland and South Africa.

I asked one of the students to talk about the meaning of the Polish currency the 'zloty', with the 'grosz' being its smallest unit: 100 groszy make up 1 zloty.

That's basically the same as 100 cents making up a dollar or 100 cents making up a rand. The meaning of groszy is derived from 'pea', the legume staple food, while the word 'złoty' is a derivation of the word 'gold', which is 'złoto' in Polish.

I then turned to Ruben and asked him to talk about the origins of the South African currency, the rand and its 100 cents. The name Rand comes from the group of hills and ridges that surround Johannesburg, from which the gold rich Witwatersrand reef was discovered and mined.

These hills are known as the Rand. So, you have the East Rand and the West Rand and collectively we have the Witwatersrand Supergroup.

[trolledu]