Mercury was often used in mining, to extract precious metals like gold and silver from their ores.

* Abitibi gold belt, a gold mining region spanning the border of Ontario and Quebec

In Europe, this system worked through the medieval period because there was virtually no new gold, silver or copper introduced through mining or conquest.

poaching threatens wildlife populations ( for example, the Painted Hunting Dog, Lycaon pictus is now considered extinct in the Congo due to human overpopulation and poaching ); water pollution ; deforestation ( chiefly due to land conversion to agriculture by indigenous farmers ); refugees responsible for significant deforestation, soil erosion, and wildlife poaching ; mining of minerals ( coltan — a mineral used in creating capacitors, diamonds, and gold ) causing environmental damage

Production was declining by the mid-1980s, so mining of the sulfide zone of the gold ore body was commenced, requiring more extensive processing facilities than had previously existed.

The industrial sector contributed an estimated 32. 2 percent to the country's GDP in 1999, led by mining ( ferronickel, gold, and silver ) and the manufacture of goods for export to the United States.

tourism, sugar processing, ferronickel and gold mining, textiles, cement, tobacco

* 1854 – Eureka Stockade: In what is claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy, more than 20 gold miners at Ballarat, Victoria, Australia are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences.

According to the Eritrean government, artisanal mining in 1998 collected 573. 4 kilograms of gold.

On 30 August 2012 it was announced that British firm Nyota Minerals was about to become the first foreign company to receive a mining licence to extract gold from an estimated resource of 52 tonnes in western Ethiopia.

construction, shrimp processing, forestry products, rum, gold mining

food and beverage ; textile ; lumbering and plywood ; cement ; petroleum extraction and refining ; manganese, uranium, and gold mining ; chemical production ; ship repair

Several U. S. firms recently made or are considering investments in Ghana, primarily in gold mining, wood products, and petroleum.

Today, gold mining output is declining.

In 2012 it was reported that confidential agreements and negotiations had been entered into by the Haitian government granting licenses for exploration or mining of gold and associated metals such as copper for over 1, 000 square miles in the mineralized zone stretching from east to west across northern Haiti.

Estimates for the value of the gold which might be extracted through open-pit mining are as high as $ 20 billion.

In the early 1540s, the center for mining shifted eastward to the Río Guayape Valley, and silver joined gold as a major product.

It later evolved into hydraulic mining when used during the California gold rush.

* Joel family, a British family of brothers who became rich from diamond and gold mining in South Africa

With the current rise in metal prices, gold and copper mining companies are opening mines in the interior.

construction and construction materials ; mining ( coal, copper, molybdenum, fluorspar, and gold ); food and beverages ; processing of animal products, cashmere and natural fiber manufacturing

For example, 99 tons of waste are generated per ton of copper, with even higher ratios in gold mining.

The tourism industry remains Nevada's largest employer, with mining continuing to be a substantial sector of the economy as Nevada is the fourth largest producer of gold in the world.

The operations of the FARC – EP are funded by kidnap to ransom, gold mining, and the production and distribution of illegal drugs.

Seafarers also introduces the " Gold River " terrain, which grants nearby players one resource of their choice for every settlement adjacent to a gold tile and 2 resources for every city.

According to a 17th century myth the population at the viking settlement Birka decided to found a new settlement, and to determine its location had a log bound with gold drifting in Lake Mälaren.

The Indians ' fierce resistance to conquest, combined with the absence of gold and silver, limited their settlement in the region during the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Spanish arrived in the territory of present-day Uruguay in 1516, but the people's fierce resistance to conquest, combined with the absence of gold and silver, limited settlement in the region during the 16th and 17th centuries.

This fierce resistance, along with a lack of gold in the Lesser Antilles, contributed to the Spanish emphasis on conquest and settlement of the Greater Antilles and the mainland.

On 4 September 2009, EY, the former auditors of Sons of Gwalia, agreed to a $ 125m settlement over their role in the gold miner ’ s collapse in 2004.

In the early stages of European ( Pākehā ) settlement of the country, the South Island had the majority of the European population and wealth due to the 1860s gold rushes.

The anthropologist Juan Villarías-Robles, who works with the Spanish National Research Council, said " Richard Freund was a newcomer to our project and appeared to be involved in his own very controversial issue concerning King Solomon's search for ivory and gold in Tartessos, the well documented settlement in the Doñana area established in the first millennium BC " and described his claims as ' fanciful '.

It was this mineral wealth, and the development of gold mines in particular, that spurred the permanent settlement of the area.

Gold mining was the original impetus for settlement in the area, and at one time the county was the largest gold producer in the Northwest.

Unlike that of much of Colorado, which was founded on the mining of gold and silver, the settlement of Larimer County was based almost entirely on agriculture, an industry that few thought possible in the region during the initial days of the Colorado Gold Rush.

The first significant development and settlement occurred in 1887 when the Missouri Pacific Railroad came through from the east, on its way to Pueblo and Colorado's rich gold fields of " Pikes Peak Or Bust ".

Otago's early waves of settlement, especially during and immediately after the gold rush of the 1860s, included a substantial minority of southern ( Guangdong ) Chinese settlers, and a smaller but also prominent number of people from Lebanon.

Their settlement became known as Lundie's Cross Roads after a trading post opened in the 1830s to serve pioneers and miners searching for gold.

However, White settlement in the area increased steadily, coming to a head with the gold rush in the nearby mountains of Northwest Georgia.

While gold supplies began to dwindle, soon eclipsed by the California Gold Rush, the settlement by White farmers continued and played prominently in the expulsion of Cherokee, Creek and Choctaw nations from the area.

Inupiat hunted for game on the west coast of Alaska from prehistoric times and there is recent archeological evidence to suggest that there was an Inupiat settlement at Nome, known in Inupiat as Sitnasuak, before the discovery of gold.

It was founded by gold miners who abandoned the Slate Creek ( later Coldfoot ) settlement around 1919.

It didn ’ t take long for this little desert settlement of Maricopaville to take on the appearance of one of the gold rush boom towns of California with men working day and night building hotels, saloons, warehouses, restaurants, theaters, etc.

Originally the settlement of Val Verde was a short-lived boom town built by Spanish settlers near a gold strike in the 19th century.

Permanent settlement began in the early 1860s, after gold discoveries in the Boise Basin brought people over the established stage and pack train routes.

During the 1860s, miners temporarily named the settlement " Lake City ", but only alluvial gold was discovered and they moved fifty miles ( 80 km ) north to the town of Warren.

The settlement was named Oro, after the Spanish word for gold, in 1892 after the surrounding gold mines, and in an attempt to attract prospectors and merchants.