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Concordia, Northern Cape
Concordia is a town in Namakwa District Municipality in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The distance from Concordia to Cape Town is approximately . Concordia was originally established as a Rhenish mission station in 1852 and copper mining began in 1853 through to 1983 in the area. The town is of historical interest because it is situated at the origin of mining endeavors in South Africa. Long before colonial times (prior to 1652), the indigenous peoples (the Khoisan or Nama) of the area extracted raw or "native copper" from the gneiss and granite hills that make up the surrounding Namaqualand Copper belt. This copper was beaten into decorative items, worn as bangles and neck adornments by these peoples. The copper boom of the late 19th century through to the early nineteen eighties has all but ceased in the area. There is currently a granite works at Concordia where large blocks of the stone are quarried and cut into large (up to 50 tons) blocks for transport to ...
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South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini. It also completely enclaves the country Lesotho. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World, and the second-most populous country located entirely south of the equator, after Tanzania. South Africa is a biodiversity hotspot, with unique biomes, plant and animal life. With over 60 million people, the country is the world's 24th-most populous nation and covers an area of . South Africa has three capital cities, with the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government based in Pretoria, Bloemfontein, and Cape Town respectively. The largest city is Johannesburg. About 80% of the population are Black South Afri ...
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Khoisan
Khoisan , or (), according to the contemporary Khoekhoegowab orthography, is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the (formerly "Khoikhoi") and the or ( in the Nǁng language). The San were formerly called Bushmen, (from Afrikaans ''Boesmans'' from nl, Boschjesmens); and the were formerly known as " Hottentots", speculated to be a Dutch onomatopoeic term referring to the click consonants prevalent in the Khoekhoe languages. However there is no evidence of this etymology."A very large number of different etymologies for the name have been suggested ... The most frequently repeated suggestion ... is that the word was a spec. use of a formally identical Dutch word meaning ‘stammerer, stutterer’, which came to be applied to the Khoekhoe and San people on account of the clicks characteristic of their languages. However, evidence for the earlier general use appears to be lacking. Another fr ...
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Namaqualand 0-4-2ST Pioneer
The Namaqua Copper Company ''Pioneer'' of 1901 was a South African steam locomotive from the pre-Union era in the Cape of Good Hope. In 1901, the Namaqua Copper Company acquired its first locomotive, a shunting engine named ''Pioneer'', for use on its tramway line between its main mine at Tweefontein and Flat Mine at Concordia. Namaqua Copper Company The Namaqua United Copper Company was formed to take over the Namaqua Copper Company from 1 January 1888 and, on 14 May 1888, it was reconstructed as the Namaqua Copper Company. In 1889, the mine built a branch line from Braakpits Junction, near O'okiep, to Flat Mine where the Company's ore crusher was located. The line was opened to traffic on 23 April 1889. Braakpits Junction was on the Namaqualand Railway of the Cape Copper Company, which ran from Port Nolloth on the West Coast to the copper mines around O'okiep. A tramway line was also constructed from Flat Mine to the Company's most important mine at Tweefontein, as well ...
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Magma
Magma () is the molten or semi-molten natural material from which all igneous rocks are formed. Magma is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and evidence of magmatism has also been discovered on other terrestrial planets and some natural satellites. Besides molten rock, magma may also contain suspended crystals and gas bubbles. Magma is produced by melting of the mantle or the crust in various tectonic settings, which on Earth include subduction zones, continental rift zones, mid-ocean ridges and hotspots. Mantle and crustal melts migrate upwards through the crust where they are thought to be stored in magma chambers or trans-crustal crystal-rich mush zones. During magma's storage in the crust, its composition may be modified by fractional crystallization, contamination with crustal melts, magma mixing, and degassing. Following its ascent through the crust, magma may feed a volcano and be extruded as lava, or it may solidify underground to form an intrusion, such as a ...
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Diorite
Diorite ( ) is an intrusive igneous rock formed by the slow cooling underground of magma (molten rock) that has a moderate content of silica and a relatively low content of alkali metals. It is intermediate in composition between low-silica (mafic) gabbro and high-silica ( felsic) granite. Diorite is found in mountain-building belts (''orogens'') on the margins of continents. It has the same composition as the fine-grained volcanic rock, andesite, which is also common in orogens. Diorite has been used since prehistoric times as decorative stone. It was used by the Akkadian Empire of Sargon of Akkad for funerary sculptures, and by many later civilizations for sculptures and building stone. Description Diorite is an intrusive igneous rock composed principally of the silicate minerals plagioclase feldspar (typically andesine), biotite, hornblende, and sometimes pyroxene. The chemical composition of diorite is intermediate, between that of mafic gabbro and felsic grani ...
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Orbicular Granite
Orbicular granite (also known as orbicular rock or orbiculite) is an uncommon plutonic rock type which is usually granitic in composition. These rocks have a unique appearance due to ''orbicules'' - concentrically layered, spheroidal structures, probably formed through nucleation around a grain in a cooling magma chamber due to rapid physical changes. Almost one third of known orbicular rock occurrences are from Finland. The occurrences are usually very small. Occurrences Chile *On the coastline eleven kilometres north of Caldera, Northern Chile, there is a body of Jurassic orbicular granite which is dyke-like with an exposed surface area of approximately 375 m2, enclosed in a tonalitic batholith. Where visible, the contact between country rock and the orbicular body is characterized by a zone of comb layering. The orbicular body has a porphyritic granodiorite matrix. The surface ratio of matrix/orbicules is 35/65; orbicules are mainly ellipsoidal with an average axis of ...
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Stone Masonry
Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone as the primary material. It is one of the oldest activities and professions in human history. Many of the long-lasting, ancient shelters, temples, monuments, artifacts, fortifications, roads, bridges, and entire cities were built of stone. Famous works of stonemasonry include the Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Cusco's Incan Wall, Easter Island's statues, Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Tihuanaco, Tenochtitlan, Persepolis, the Parthenon, Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China, and Chartres Cathedral. Definition Masonry is the craft of shaping rough pieces of rock into accurate geometrical shapes, at times simple, but some of considerable complexity, and then arranging the resulting stones, often together with mortar, to form structures. *Quarrymen split sheets of rock, and extract the resulting blocks of stone from the ground. *Sawyers cut these rough blocks into cuboids, to required size ...
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Culture Of Cornwall
The culture of Cornwall ( kw, Gonisogeth Kernow) forms part of the culture of the United Kingdom, but has distinct customs, traditions and peculiarities. Cornwall has many strong local traditions. After many years of decline, Cornish culture has undergone a strong revival, and many groups exist to promote Cornwall's culture and language today. Language The Cornish language is a Celtic language closely related to Breton and slightly less so to Welsh and Cumbric. All of these are directly descended from the British language formerly spoken throughout most of Britain. The language went into decline following the introduction of the English ''Book of Common Prayer'' (in 1549) and by the turn of the 19th century had ceased to be used as a community language (see main article for further discussion). During the 19th century researchers began to study the language from any remaining isolated speakers and in 1904 Henry Jenner published ''A Handbook in the Cornish Language'' which st ...
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Okiep
Okiep is a small town in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, and was in the 1870s ranked as having the richest copper mine in the world. The town is on the site of a spring that was known in the Khoekhoe language of the Nama people as ''U-gieb'' (''large brackish place'') and was originally spelled as ''O'okiep''. History Early settlers in the Cape Colony heard rumours of mountains in the north-west that were fabulously rich in copper. Governor Simon van der Stel was inclined to believe these tales when, in 1681, a group of Namas visited the Castle in Cape Town and brought along some pure copper. Van der Stel himself led a major expedition in 1685 and reached the fabled mountains on 21 October. Three shafts were sunk and revealed a rich lode of copper ore - the shafts exist to this day. For almost 200 years nothing was done about the discovery, largely because of its remote location. The explorer James Alexander was the first to follow up on van der Stel's discovery. In ...
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Second Boer War
The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the South African Republic and the Orange Free State) over the Empire's influence in Southern Africa from 1899 to 1902. Following the discovery of gold deposits in the Boer republics, there was a large influx of "foreigners", mostly British from the Cape Colony. They were not permitted to have a vote, and were regarded as "unwelcome visitors", invaders, and they protested to the British authorities in the Cape. Negotiations failed and, in the opening stages of the war, the Boers launched successful attacks against British outposts before being pushed back by imperial reinforcements. Though the British swiftly occupied the Boer republics, numerous Boers refused to accept defeat and engaged in guerrilla warfare. Eventually, British scorched eart ...
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Namaqualand Copper Belt
Namaqualand (khoekhoe: "Nama-kwa" meaning Nama Khoe people's land) is an arid region of Namibia and South Africa, extending along the west coast over and covering a total area of . It is divided by the lower course of the Orange River into two portions – Little Namaqualand to the south and Great Namaqualand to the north. Little Namaqualand is within the Namakwa District Municipality, forming part of Northern Cape Province, South Africa. It is geographically the largest district in the country, spanning over 26,836 km2. A typical municipality is Kamiesberg Local Municipality. The semidesert Succulent Karoo region experiences hot summers, sparse rainfall, and cold winters.Discover South Africa: Your Online Travel Directory. Discover Namakwa. Great Namaqualand in the Karas Region of Namibia, is sparsely populated by the Namaqua, a Khoikhoi people who have traditionally inhabited the Namaqualand region. Tourism The area’s landscape ranges from an unexploited coasta ...
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Granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies underground. It is common in the continental crust of Earth, where it is found in igneous intrusions. These range in size from dikes only a few centimeters across to batholiths exposed over hundreds of square kilometers. Granite is typical of a larger family of ''granitic rocks'', or ''granitoids'', that are composed mostly of coarse-grained quartz and feldspars in varying proportions. These rocks are classified by the relative percentages of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase (the QAPF classification), with true granite representing granitic rocks rich in quartz and alkali feldspar. Most granitic rocks also contain mica or amphibole minerals, though a few (known as leucogranites) contain almost no dark minerals. Granite is nearly alway ...
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