Cerro Rico, the mountain that eats men

The mountain above Potosí in Bolivia, 4,782 metres up, that bankrolled an empire. Mining began in 1545 and about 85 percent of all the silver produced in the central Andes came out of this one hill, some 60,000 tons of it, with perhaps 50,000 tons still in the rock. It has a second name, the mountain that eats men, and it earned it: estimates of the dead over five centuries run from hundreds of thousands to eight million, through mercury poisoning, cave-ins and silicosis. Around 15,000 people still work it today in cooperatives, mostly for tin and zinc now, and a miner’s life expectancy is about forty. The summit is sinking a few centimetres a year and a sinkhole had to be filled with cement in 2011; UNESCO listed it as endangered in 2014. Tours go in. Think hard about whether you want one.