Uploaded September 2024 | Updated September 2026, 13 hours ago
One of Earth's most impressive gold mines (which also produces copper and silver) sits at 14,100 ft (4,300 m) above sea level on top of a mountain ridge on the island of New Guinea, right next to Puncak Jaya, New Guinea and Oceania's highest peak. The mine, called the Grasberg Mine, was developed decades after Jean Jacques Dozy, a Dutch geologist, saw promising evidence of mineralization during a 1936 expedition to climb Puncak Jaya. The deposit being mined has an interesting relationship to the surrounding bedrock, which itself has had an interesting journey to become such an enormous tropical mountain. This video uses Microsoft Paint diagrams and Google Earth to show where the mine is located and how the gold and other metals ended up in a deposit on top of the mountain.
One of Earth's most impressive gold mines (which also produces copper and silver) sits at 14,100 ft (4,300 m) above sea level on top of a mountain ridge on the island of New Guinea, right next to Puncak Jaya, New Guinea and Oceania's highest peak. The mine, called the Grasberg Mine, was developed decades after Jean Jacques Dozy, a Dutch geologist, saw promising evidence of mineralization during a 1936 expedition to climb Puncak Jaya. The deposit being mined has an interesting relationship to the surrounding bedrock, which itself has had an interesting journey to become such an enormous tropical mountain. This video uses Microsoft Paint diagrams and Google Earth to show where the mine is located and how the gold and other metals ended up in a deposit on top of the mountain.
