Not far from the Australian city of Wingen is the mountain of the same name, which is constantly burning. Moreover, the burning area is more and more every year. The online magazine Factinteres will tell you more about this place.
For the first time they started talking about the burning mountain Wingen at the beginning of the 19th century. At the time, people believed that smoke was a sign of volcanic activity. Until 1830, Mount Wingen was even the only volcano on the continent.
The first settlers near Mount Wingen were the Wanaruah tribe, which gave the name to this mountain. Translated from their language, the word Wingen means "fire". It was from this tribe that it became known that the mountain is a volcano.
Scientists have found that inside the burning mountain there is a lot of a rare high-temperature form of quartz, which is of considerable interest to the scientific community. Also, scientists have found that the combustion process takes place at a depth of 30 meters and occupies at least 100 square meters.
After studying Mount Wingen, it became known that the smoke is not due to volcanic activity, but due to the burning of coal seams, which are rich in these lands. The total area of burnt coal is about 6,500 square meters. On average, the burning area increases by 1 meter every year. If we calculate the beginning of combustion, then this happened about 6,000 years ago. This age makes this mountain the oldest burning mountain in the world.
Promotional video:
Of course, the burning rate could be different, but other studies of the area also confirmed the burning age of several thousand years. It was also found that the burning started naturally, namely due to volcanic activity.
