The painstaking work of small time prospectors

In the mountains of the Dominican Republic, Maria-Previda and her family excavate the gravel from a gold deposit, it is the most simple and traditional way of gold prospecting.  We wash the gravel and earth in a pan using a circular motion to remove fine sand and earth.  Gold deposits are heavier and therefore sink to the bottom.

But this ancestral method is painstaking and the results are uncertain. Here we collect gold deposits from the banks of the river.  In Brazil, nearly fifty tons of gold are collected each year by small time prospectors, we call them garimpeiros.

Timothy S Green, author of “The World of Gold” : “At least one million people alone try to survive by prospecting gold in a traditional way.  This remains a prosperous activity, around one hundred tons of gold or three million ounces, worth close to 140 million pounds are found each year in the world by small time prospectors.”

Today’s work has only brought Maria-Previda and her family around seven hundredths of an ounce of gold worth less than £20.  But in 1848 a gold deposit like this one found in Californian rivers, provoked an outbreak of gold fever, it was the largest migration in history and created the wealth for a Nation.

Why not read our some of our other highly interesting articles:

The Californian Gold Rush

Alchemy damages the Amazon Basin

Tags: Gold

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 11:23 am and is filed under Gold, Mining. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.