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Cerro Rico de Potosi

The 'rich mountain' above Potosi in Bolivia, the world's largest silver deposit: a 13.8-million-year-old volcanic dome whose silver, found in 1545 and dug out by forced Andean labour, made Potosi a city of well over 100,000 people and was minted there into Spanish pieces of eight.

Dated events and their evidence

• about 13,800,000 years ago mainstream
  a dacitic volcanic dome is extruded at 13.8 +/- 0.2 million years ago; the silver and tin veins form within about 0.3 million years after it source
• 1545 CE mainstream
  Diego de Huallpa, a Quechua miner, comes upon the silver of Cerro Rico; the mining town of Potosi is founded the same year source
• 1574 CE mainstream
  the Spanish reintroduce the mita, the Inca system of annual forced labour, to work the mines source
• 1603 CE mainstream
  an anonymous account counts some 6,000 Spaniards and other Europeans, 5,000 Africans and at least 120,000 native Andeans living in Potosi source
• 1987 CE mainstream
  the City of Potosi is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site source
• 2014 CE mainstream
  Potosi is put on the List of World Heritage in Danger because uncontrolled mining threatens Cerro Rico source

Where

19.6190° S, 65.7500° W

Sources

• https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00189185
• https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/70018674
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Rico
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potos%C3%AD
• https://ozgeology.com/blogs/news/the-richest-silver-deposit-on-earth-cerro-rico

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