Anosivola
Coordinates: 21 ° 17 ′ S , 46 ° 39 ′ E
Anosivola is a place in the southern highlands of Madagascar , which belongs to the rural commune ( Commune rural ) Mangidy . The place is located in the Haute Matsiatra region , about 70 km west of the provincial capital Fianarantsoa . The place became known through an attempted gold mine fraud at the beginning of the 20th century, which was prevented by the geologist Hans Merensky .
Geography and infrastructure
The place is located on the east bank of the Manambovona river at about 800 meters above sea level. Immediately to the east of the village, the terrain rises to a north-south mountain ridge up to 1078 m high, at the foot and slopes of which there are extensive pastures. The ridge consists of three striking, white marble bands between gneiss .
From Mangidy the provincial road 104 leads south, from which a 25 km long junction leads to Anosivola. Apart from a primary school, the place has no other infrastructure facilities and is not connected to the electricity network.
The 1905 attempted fraud
A Frenchman by the name of Louis Lecomte acquired extensive mining licenses in the area of Anosivola in 1904 and founded a company to exploit gold deposits. A mining engineer and partner Lecomtes named JE Jones acquired further licenses and traveled to Johannesburg , where he reported on reserves of 25 million tons of gold ore with average grades of 10 troy ounces (= 311 g) gold and tried to attract investors for a company to mine the ore . Various South African mining companies and banking houses sent a group of geologists, including Hans Merensky, to examine the occurrence. In July 1905 the geologists traveled by ship to Mananjary and from there inland via Fianarantsoa to Anosivola and Anjiva, another place within Lecomte's deposit . Merensky's first tests were very promising, but when the sampling points were checked again on a later day, he could no longer find any gold. It turned out that the first samples taken by two employees of Lecomtes had been “salted”, that is, gold grains of foreign origin had been added to simulate a high gold content in the samples taken. Merensky immediately sent a messenger to the nearest telegraph office in Fianarantsoa and warned his clients against a financial commitment.
Mining after 1905
The ridge at Anosivola actually contains gold, only in much lower concentrations than Lecomte and Jones pretended to their financiers. Due to the failed attempt at fraud, Lecomte was only able to set up a simple ore washing plant created by local workers, which delivered at least 60 kg of gold. During an inspection by state mining engineers in 1924, the facilities had already been abandoned. Follow-up examinations showed a gold content of around 3 grams per cubic meter in the loose sediments at the foot of the ridge. The residents of the village are still panning for gold on a small scale from the streams around the old mine.
The French mineralogist Alfred Lacroix visited the place around 1910 and found quartz veins with chalcopyrite , azurite and malachite in the marbles of the ridge, which indicate copper mineralization . The deposit was examined during a geological mapping campaign in the 1950s by the Madagascar Geological Survey. An Australian company explored this ore deposit near Anosivola between 2012 and 2014, and the ore grades proved to be too low for industrial mining.
literature
- Carte de Madagascar au 1 / 100,000 Feuille M 53 Solila. Service Géographique de Madagascar 1957.
- Eberhard W. Machens: Hans Merensky - geologist and patron . Schweizerbart, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-510-65269-3 , p. 47-54 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.fonds-patrimoniaux.mg/gsdl/collect/butana/index/assoc/HASH0110/b2ce129a.dir/UTBUFL2308(1905)_1010-12935-12936-146.pdf (link not available)
- ↑ Lecomte affair. In: Revue Minière de Madagascar. Year 1905, Volume 3, pp. 2–6.
- ↑ Henri Besairie : Documentation sur l'or à Madagascar . In: Travaux du Bureau Géologique . tape 6 , 1949, pp. 132-133 .
- ^ Alfred Lacroix: Minéralogie de Madagascar . tape 1 . Challamel, Paris 1922, p. 189, 294 .
- ^ André Emberger: Etude géologique des Feuilles Tsitondroina-Solila-Fianarantsoa . In: Travaux du Bureau Géologique . tape 50 , 1953, pp. 30-32 .
- ↑ Homepage Aziana Ltd ( Memento from January 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on March 25, 2014.