Gold mining
process of extracting gold from the ground
Gold mining involves the extraction of gold either via conventional mining or via placer mining, as it is a soft metal, gold is relatively easy to separate from its surrounding. Global gold production is estimated at approximately 4,000–5,000 metric tons per year, with the majority coming from newly mined sources. Historically, gold mining from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. The expansion of gold mining to ores that are below the surface has led to more complex extraction processes such as large scale pit mining and chemical extraction processes such as gold cyanidation.
The history of gold mining dates to at least 4700 BC, with gold being an important metal mined in pre-history and early civilizations around the world. In empires like Rome and Egypt, gold mining would be a source of wealth and power for governments. Gold rushes have been driving forces of migration and industrialization in many parts of the world, starting in the middle ages in parts of Europe, and played an important role in waves of colonization in the Americas. 19th Century Gold rushes to California, the Klondike, South Africa and Australia all led to large migrations of speculators.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, large corporations produce the vast majority of the gold mined. As a result of the increasing value of gold, there are also millions of small, artisanal miners in many parts of the Global South.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Gold mining” as process of extracting gold from the ground. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1071389. The Library of Congress control number is sh85055733. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gold mining” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.