South African Occurrence
In the Namaqualand, South Africa, just west of the small town of Concordia, there is a rare occurrence of orbicular granite. The outcrop, known as Orbicule Hill or "wonderkoppie" (as it is locally known), is a provincial heritage site and one of just two known occurrences in South Africa. When cut and polished, the granite has a very attractive pinkish colour with lighter and darker shades of grey oval shaped or orbicular inclusions. Orbiculite has been used to make jewellery and other decorative items in the past, but due to its rarity in South Africa, it is not commercially exploited and has become more a curiosity due to it being considered something of an enigma in geology. The geology of the surrounding area can be described as gneissic and granitic and is better known for its once rich copper deposits. The rocks of this region form part of the mid Proterozoic Eon and formed approximately one billion years ago.
Read more about this topic: Orbicular Granite
Famous quotes containing the words south, african and/or occurrence:
“The developments in the North were those loosely embraced in the term modernization and included urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization. While those changes went forward apace, the antebellum South changed comparatively little, clinging to its rural, agricultural, labor-intensive economy and its traditional folk culture.”
—C. Vann Woodward (b. 1908)
“So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)