In the XVIth century, rumours of fabulous wealth drew Spanish
adventurers to this lonely place.
What they found here exceeded their wildest dreams: a mountain of
silver they called the Cerro Rico.
To the Spanish, the Cerro Rico was a gift from God. It yielded tens of
thousands of tons of silver, enough to finance the entire Spanish
empire.
But why should so much mineral wealth be concentrated in one spot? And
it’s not just here: all around the Pacific ocean there are
rich
deposits of copper, silver and gold.
In fact, you might call the rim of the Pacific, the ring of gold. But
it’s more usually called the ring of fire because all around
the
margins of the Pacific basin, associated with the mineral deposits,
there are huge chains of volcanoes.
First sight, there might not be seen any connexion between volcanoes and
mineral wealth, but in fact there is. And that link gives us a clue to
one of the most puzzling mysteries about the Earth.
How did the dry land, the continents on which we live, how did they
form?
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