Sotk Gold Mine
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Sotk Gold Mine
The Sotk gold mine ( hy, Սոթքի ոսկու հանքավայր, translit=Sot’k’i vosku hank’avayr), known in Azerbaijan as the Zod gold mine ( az, Zod qızıl yatağı), is the largest mine in Armenia and Azerbaijan in terms of pure gold reserves. It is located in the vicinity of the Sotk village in the Vardenis region of Armenia's Gegharkunik Province, and the adjacent part of the Kalbajar District of Azerbaijan. According to Armenian officials, the gold mine is split roughly in half between the two countries, while according to Azerbaijani officials, 74 percent of the mine lies on Azerbaijani territory. History Establishment and operation The mine was discovered in 1951 and has been in operation since 1976 In 1993, during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, the Kalbajar District of Azerbaijan (including the Azerbaijani part of the mine) passed under full control of Armenia and remained so until November 2020 (de jure continuing to be part of Azerbaijan). In 2007, Arm ...
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Armenia
Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''Oxford Reference Online'' also place Armenia in Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region; and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the Lachin corridor (under a Russian peacekeeping force) and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Yerevan is the capital, largest city and the financial center. Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. The first Armenian state of Urartu was established in 860 BC, and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia. The Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great in the 1st century BC and in the year 301 became the first state in the world to adopt ...
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Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia (Republic of Dagestan) to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city. The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence from the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918 and became the first secular democratic Muslim-majority state. In 1920, the country was incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Azerbaijan SSR. The modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the same year. In September 1991, the ethnic Armenian majority of the Nagorno-Karabakh region formed the ...
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Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal in a pure form. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in free elemental ( native state), as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver (as electrum), naturally alloyed with other metals like copper and palladium, and mineral inclusions such as within pyrite. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium (gold tellurides). Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid), forming a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion. Gold is ...
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Gold Mining
Gold mining is the extraction of gold resources by mining. Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. However, with the expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface, has led to more complex extraction processes such as pit mining and gold cyanidation. In the 20th and 21st centuries, most volume of mining was done by large corporations, however the value of gold has led to millions of small, artisanal miners in many parts of the Global South. Like all mining, human rights and environmental issues are common issues in the gold mining industry. In smaller mines with less regulation, health and safety risks are much higher. History The exact date that humans first began to mine gold is unknown, but some of the oldest known gold artifacts were found in the Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria. The graves of the necropolis were built between 4700 and 4200 BC, indicating that gold mining could be at least 700 ...
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Sotk
Sotk ( hy, Սոթք) is a village in the Gegharkunik Province of Armenia, well known for its gold mines. Etymology According to J. Markwart and N. Adonts, the name Sotk may be connected to the name of a tribe called ''Tsavde'' (''atsvots'') mentioned in ancient Armenian sources,Hakobyan T.Ch., Melik-Bakhshyan S.T., Barseghyan H.Ch., ''Hayastani ev harakits shrjanneri teghanunneri bararan (Toponymical Dictionary of Armenia and Surrounding Regions)'', v. 2, 313, Yerevan, 1988-2001. while others connect it with the toponym ''Suta'' (or ''Shuta'') of the Hittite sources (the presence of the Hittites was proposed in the vicinity of Lake Sevan in 2009). History Sotk has been well known for its mines throughout its history. The mines may have been exploited as early as the 2nd millennium BC, evidenced by the discovery of pits, funnels covered with grass, underground workings, wooden tools, stone mortars, washing pots, and more. The mines were used with interruptions until the 14th ...
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Vardenis
Vardenis ( hy, Վարդենիս) is a town and urban municipal community in the southeastern part of the Gegharkunik Province of Armenia. It is located in the valley of the Masrik River, on the territory of the Masrik artesian basin at above sea level, near the southeastern shores of Lake Sevan. It is by road east of the capital Yerevan, and southeast of the provincial centre Gavar. The administrative territory of Vardenis comprises , of which is occupied by the town itself. Vardenis obtained its status as an urban settlement in 1995. As of the 2011 census, the population of the town was 12,685. However, as per the 2016 official estimate, the population of Vardenis is 12,600. Etymology Until 1969, Vardenis was known as ''Basarkechar'' (; ; ). The town was also known as ''Vasakashen'' (). History The current territory of Vardenis was part of the ''Sotk'' canton of historic Syunik; the 9th province of Greater Armenia. According to traditional legends, the settlement was ...
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Gegharkunik Province
Gegharkunik ( hy, Գեղարքունիք, ) is a province ('' marz'') of Armenia. Its capital and largest city is Gavar. Gegharkunik Province is located at the eastern part of Armenia, bordering Azerbaijan. It includes the exclave of Artsvashen, which has been under Azerbaijani occupation since the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. With an area of , Gegharkunik is the largest province in Armenia. However, approximately 24% or of its territory is covered by Lake Sevan, the largest lake in the South Caucasus and a major tourist attraction of the region. The Yerevan-Sevan-Dilijan republican highway runs through the province. Etymology and symbols The early Armenian history Movses Khorenatsi connected the name of Gegharkunik with Gegham, a 5th-generation descendant of the legendary patriarch and founder of the Armenian nation Hayk. Gegham was the father of Sisak (founder of the Siunia dynasty) and Harma (grandfather of Ara the Beautiful). The Gegham Mountains and the Lake of Gegham ( ...
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Kalbajar District
Kalbajar District ( az, Kəlbəcər rayonu) is one of the 66 districts of Azerbaijan. It is located in the west of the country and belongs to the East Zangezur Economic Region. The district borders the districts of Lachin, Khojaly, Agdam, Tartar, Goranboy, Goygol and Dashkasan districts of Azerbaijan, as well as the Gegharkunik and Vayots Dzor provinces of Armenia. Its capital and largest city is Kalbajar. As of 2020, the district had a nominal population of 94,100. History In Turkic ''Kalbajar'' means ''"Castle on the mouth of the river"''. The city of Kalbajar was renamed to ''Karvachar'' ( hy, Քարվաճառ) after its occupation in the First Nagorno-Karabakh war, which corresponds to the ancient district of Vaykunik, one of 12 cantons of Artsakh. Robert H. Hewsen, ''Armenia: A Historical Atlas''. The University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. 40, 101–102, 264–265. It was also known as ''Upper-Khachen'' or ''Tsar'' ( after its chief town) and was ruled by one of th ...
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Eurasianet
Eurasianet is a news organisation based at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, the United States, that provides news, information and analysis on countries in Central Asia, the Caucasus region, Russia and Southwest Asia. Launched in 2000, it operated under the auspices of the Eurasia Project of the Open Society Foundations (OSF). Eurasianet spun off in 2016 to become an independent, tax-exempt non-profit news organization. The site receives support from Google, OSF and the National Endowment for Democracy. Eurasianet has won EPpy Awards The EPPY Awards are a premier accolade for media-affiliated websites, presented by '' Editor & Publisher'' magazine. Designed in 1996 to honor newspaper companies that did an "outstanding job in creating online services," the awards were originall ... for its special feature website on the Kyrgyz Revolution Revisited (2007) and for Best News website with under 250,000 monthly visitors (2011). It has also received numerous citations from ...
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First Nagorno-Karabakh War
The First Nagorno-Karabakh War, referred to in Armenia as the Artsakh Liberation War ( hy, Արցախյան ազատամարտ, Artsakhyan azatamart) was an ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet Republics, entangled themselves in protracted, undeclared mountain warfare in the mountainous heights of Karabakh as Azerbaijan attempted to curb the secessionist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave's parliament had voted in favor of uniting with Armenia and a referendum, boycotted by the Azerbaijani population of Nagorno-Karabakh, was held, in which a majority voted in favor of independence. The demand to unify with Armenia began in a relatively peaceful manner in 1988; in the following months, as the S ...
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Sotka Gold Mine, Armenia And Azerbaijan Boundary, Sentinel-2 Satellite Image, 2020-11-14
Sotka ("a hundred" in Slavic languages) may refer to: * MR-UR-100 Sotka Soviet ballistic missile * T-34 medium tank, nicknamed ''sotka'' in Finnish * T-100 "Sotka", a Soviet heavy tank prototype considered while developing the Kliment Voroshilov tank * Sukhoi T-4 The Sukhoi T-4, or "Aircraft 100", or "Project 100", or "Sotka" was a Soviet high-speed reconnaissance, anti-ship and strategic bomber aircraft that did not proceed beyond the prototype stage. It is sometimes called the Su-100. Design and devel ..., a Soviet bomber aircraft * An area (a metric unit of area, one hundredth of a hectare) {{disambig ...
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2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War
The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War was an armed conflict in 2020 that took place in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenian-occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, the surrounding territories. It was a major escalation of an unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, conflict over the region, involving Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Political status of Nagorno-Karabakh, self-declared Armenian breakaway state of Republic of Artsakh, Artsakh. The war lasted for more than a month and resulted in Azerbaijani victory, with Armenia ceding the Armenian-occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, territories it had occupied in 1994 surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. The defeat ignited 2020–2021 Armenian protests, anti-government protests in Armenia. Post-war skirmishes continued in the region, including September 2022 Armenia–Azerbaijan clashes, substantial clashes in 2022. Fighting began on the morning of 27 September, with an Azerbaijani offensive along the Nagorn ...
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