>> this is the most ancient form of falconry in the world. it blows my mind that it's even real. it's like something out of "lord of the rings," but you can do it. >> we built a camera harness to learn what it's like to fly like an eagle. ( ticking ) >> these giant stone statues have fascinated and confounded visitors for centuries. dutch explorers named this place almost 300 years ago when they spotted it on easter sunday. >> it has soul, it has life. >> they're alive. >> absolutely. >> in the middle of the pacific, easter island is very difficult for most people to reach, until tonight. 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[ horn honks ] keep -- keep doing it, buddy. switch to progressive and you can save hundreds. you know, like the sign says. othroughout the country for the andpast twelve years,reds. mr. michael bloomberg is here. vo: leadership in action. mayor bloomberg and president obama worked together in the fight for gun safety laws, to improve education, and to develop innovative ways to help teens gain the skills needed to find good jobs. obama: at a time when washington is divided in old ideological battles he shows us what can be achieved when we bring people together to seek pragmatic solutions. bloomberg: i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message. it's timcan it helpltimate sleep nukeep me asleep?he sleep number 360 smart bed. absolutely, it senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. save 50% on the sleep number 360 limited edition smart bed. plus 0% interest for 24 months on all smart beds. only for a limited time ♪ ♪ of new non-drowsy claritin cool mint chewables. the only allergy product with relief of your worst symptoms, including itchy throat plus an immediate blast of cooling sensation. feel the clarity and live claritin clear. >> whitaker: good evening. i'm bill whitaker. welcome to "60 minutes presents." tonight, three great adventures. we'll soar with eagles high above mongolia, then cruise across the pacific to visit we begin our adventures with a trip deep below ground. over the years at "60 minutes" we have been in more than a few tunnels. we explored mexican drug lord el chapo's subterranean escape routes, burrowed through a roman villa buried by mount vesuvius and traveled the depths of the new york city subway. but nothing prepared us for a place called moab khotsong, a south african gold mine that extends nearly two miles beneath the surface. as we first reported in 2018, in their pursuit of gold, south africans have dug the deepest holes on earth. the country was the world's top gold producer for decades. now the gold is running out, just as these ultra-deep mines have attracted a new breed of miner on a very different quest. we went along for the adventure. in the early morning light, tall mineshafts loom over the vaal river basin two hours southwest of johannesburg. this once was a booming gold field. now, most mines lie abandoned. but moab khotsong is bustling. long before the sun rises, thousands of miners start lining up for the triple-deck elevator called "th it's jammed, but more always push on. it'seally snug in here.pack in s sardines, the electric bells signal we're ready, and the cage drops. slowly at first, then picks up speed fast. we plunge 450 stories straight down. it's the longest elevator ride on earth. this is fast, it's really fast! the cage rattles and whistles as we descend. the air gets more humid the deeper we go. our lifeline to the surface is a machine called the manwinder, massive coils of steel rope two inches thick that attach to the cage and unspool faster and faster. we dropped two miles in a couple of minutes, and emerged in an underground city. it's like grand central station at rush hour. to get to the gold, miners must walk miles through a vast maze of dimly lit tunnels. sometimes you're lucky and can catch a ride, but mostly you just walk. for leroy lee, it's in the blood. his father worked in the mines. now it's his turn. his family depends on his job. >> leroy lee: it's four, six people: it's my kids, my wife, my fianceeé, my mum and my sister. ( drilling ) >> whitaker: the gold in these ultra-deep mines is found in narrow veins, laced through the rock. some are no wider than a pencil. it's cramped at the rock face, and we crouch alongside the miners as they work, hunched over in the dark. the noise from the drills is deafening. massive air conditioners cool the tunnels, but it can still reach 120 degrees down here. >> are you guys ready? >> whitaker: at the end of the shift, we had to rush not to miss the elevator back up. it doesn't wait for anyone. and here's where all that breaking rock pays off: the smelter. the ore is smashed and pulverized in a grinder before being fed into a furnace. monga kasongo, who runs the operation, told us we were the first tv crew to film the weekly ritual they call "the pour." we all had to wear these special pajamas with no pockets so we couldn't steal anything. the heat was intense as the furnace reached almost 2,000 degrees. the gold turned to liquid and poured down into the molds. >> monga kasongo: when i saw it the first time, i was like, "wow." that's something that keeps me going. when you hear people who have never seen gold or touched it, i feel like i'm more privileged. >> whitaker: these bars will be refined again to 99.99% purity before they're sold for coins and jewelry. the mine used to process about 60 tons of gold a year. now it's just a quarter of that. still, the day we watched the pour, there was a pretty good haul. wow, this is quite heavy. >> kasongo: yes, it is. >> whitaker: how much is this? >> kasongo: 11 million rand. >> whitaker: in u.s. dollars, we're talking $7.5 to $8 million u.s. dollars for what you poured today? >> kasongo: yes, definitely. >> whitaker: that sounds like a good day? >> kasongo: it's a good business. ( laughs ) >> whitaker: it's one thing to come here for the gold, but now this harsh environment has attracted others-- scientists hunting for what they call extreme life. >> tullis onstott: we've found water that's a billion years old. >> whitaker: a billion years old? >> onstott: a billion years old. >> whitaker: in these caves? >> onstott: right. >> whitaker: an international team led by princeton geoscientist tullis onstott and belgian biologist gaetan borgonie are pioneers in the search for life buried in the rock, where no one thought it could survive. borgonie says his colleagues thought he was crazy when he took a sabbatical to try to prove there was life deep underground. >> gaetan borgonie: "oh, come on," they said. "you're going to go to south africa for a year, you're going to go look for something that does not exist there?" >> whitaker: they've lost count of the number of trips to the bottom of thnes searching for life hidden in the ancient water, seeping through the rock. >> borgonie: this is a completely different world down there. there are different rules. >> whitaker: how so? >> borgonie: the temperature is different; the pressure is different. i mean, it's a tough world down there for life. >> whitaker: the next day, we went along with them to the deepest level of the mine. for them, it was just another ay at the office.just another for us, it was an eye-opener. this feels like that movie "journey to the center of the earth." with just the light from our headlamps, we waded through a tunnel that had been flooded with cold water to cool it down. then we grabbed a chairlift cut through a channel of rock-- except this one went down. this is like the best disney ride ever! picture five of new york's world trade centers stacked on top of each other. that's how deep in the earth we are. now we've stopped for a second. ( alarms ) i hope it's a second. we have to get off? when the chairlift stopped suddenly, we had to hike down the last 50 yards to the bottom. then, at the end of an abandoned tunnel, our scientists found something amazing. >> onstott: i've been looking for 20 years for a salty water deposit like this. never found it till now. >> whitaker: white patches on the wall turned out to be salt. is that edible? >> borgonie: i don't know. he's tried it. >> whitaker: this is ancient salt? >> onstott: that's the question. has to be-- has to be ancient salt. >> whitaker: very salty. and the source? this dripping salt water. what does that tell you? >> onstott: it tells me this water is extremely old. because in these rock formations, they were formed three billion years ago. there weren't salt deposits back then. >> whitaker: they believe this water could be all that's left of an ancient ocean. and where there's water, there can be life. >> onstott: we could be looking at something which has never seen the life that has evolved on the surface of the planet. >> whitaker: all from this cave two miles down in south africa? >> onstott: all from gold mines in south africa, exactly. >> whitaker: in 2011, they found what no one thought possible: these tiny worms living in a pocket of water 5,000 years old. what you're seeing is magnified. these worms are no bigger than a human hair. it was a species never-before- seen. it survives without sunlight, deep in the hot underworld, so they called it "mephisto," or "the devil." >> borgonie: that's where my worms live. they eat bacteria. >> whitaker: the first worm you found was in something like that? >> borgonie: yeah. >> whitaker: using an endoscope camera, they were the first to film this deep inside the earth's crust. this is the devil worm's home. before this, no one thought animal life could exist this you've made a big discovery. >> borgonie: for me, it is big, because for me personally, i had to fight quite a lot of people to be able to do this. on a personal level, that was the biggest victory for me. in the total grand scheme of things, it's just a worm. >> whitaker: it's just a worm? >> borgonie: it's just a worm. >> whitaker: they were surprised to find other living creatures too. so many, they called them a zoo. a crustacean, about 1/64th of an inch; an arthropod; a flatworm; and single-cell bacteria. it set off a storm of speculation about where else extreme life might exist... perhaps even on mars. nasa helped fund their research. >> borgonie: if there is life here in the deep, then you should definitely dig on mars, because if life was ever there, you will find some life form, i believe very strongly, still on mars. >> whitaker: so the martians we meet in the future could be these single-cell organisms you're, you're talking about. >> borgonie: i think that would be the-- that is-- yes, indeed. i think that would be the most likely. but be prepared to be surprised, i would say. >> whitaker: south africa's gold mines are now so deep, they might as well be on another planet. >> bernard swanepoel: i'm not sure that we really want to send human beings much deeper. >> whitaker: bernard swanepoel started his career underground, and ended it as the c.e.o. of harmony gold, which now owns moab khotsong. >> swanepoel: if you are in a successful mining team, it must be like a successful sports team. i mean, mining is one of those activities where, at the end of every shift, you know whether you won or lost. >> whitaker: gold was the lifeblood of south africa. the way it's dug out has changed little since apartheid, when underpaid black miners often worked in mortal danger. at its worst, more than 800 workers a year died in mining accidents. no coincidence, the struggle that led to apartheid's defeat started underground. gold and gold mining seem to be in the d.n.a. of south africa. >> swanepoel: south african gold mining especially has always been at the center of all political and other activities in our country. i mean, our bad apartheid history is intertwined with gold mining. i mean, a lot of the-- a lot of the legislation to dispossess black people of land was in order to create cheap labor for south african gold mines. >> whitaker: you grew up in a small mining town during the era of apartheid. what are your strongest memories? >> swanepoel: well, ultimately, i'm a privileged person that, because i was white and i was male, those were the two requirements at the time to become a mining engineer. >> whitaker: so are you the new face of south african mining? >> kasongo: i will say yes. we are the new generation in the min wtaker:s r apareid enr the smelter.managing he told us he chose to move here from the congo to work in the mines. has that wound in south africa been healed? >> kasongo: not 100% healed. but there is some healing happening, there is some healing, yes, because you have a different, different people working in the mines, and the mindset has been changing. >> whitaker: now, safety is paramount. you'll find women underground, and blacks are senior managers. once some of the lowest-paid laborers, are now among the highest. but this generation of gold miners know they may be the last. of the 11 gold mines that once flourished around here, only e l operate. the mines are now so deep, it's becoming too expensive to get the gold out. the story of the ultra-deep mines is nearing its final chapter. to dig the riches from such astounding depths took grit and brute force. now, south africa's resolve must be deployed to solving the next challenge: what to do when the gold runs out. 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( ♪ ) ( ♪ ) (mixed shouts, laughter) ( ♪ ) the redesigned three row acadia. make the most of every moment. the redesigned three row acadia. making the most of family time means taking over the kitchen on the weekend. and while my breakfast might be different than mom's. that's part of the fun. make the most of family time with pillsbury grands biscuits. this is charlie not coughing because he took delsym 12-hour. and this is charlie still not coughing while trying his hardest not to wake zeus. delsym 12-hour. nothing lasts longer for powerful cough relief. >> whitaker: falconry, the art of hunting with birds of prey, was born in the forbidding altai mountains of central asia. as we first told you last year, hunters there still loft golden eagles into the sky, in a partnership of man and bird that predates recorded history. we say "man," but, in truth, one of the best hunters in mongolia today is a woman from oklahoma city. lauren mcgough took scott pelley to one of the most remote places on earth to meet the hunters who trained her. and, before the next few minutes are through, you will know what it's like to fly like an eagle. >> pelley: the mongolian steppe is the greatest expanse of grassland unaltered by humankind. it endures because human existence has narrow odds between the widest climate extremes on earth-- 104 degrees in summer, 50 below in winter. nomads depend on the animals that yield nearly all of their food, fiber, clothing, and fuel. and, one of the oldest bonds in nature is an alliance of survival among hunters, horses, and golden eagles. >> lauren mcgough: this is the most ancient form of falconry in the world. this is where it all began. it's the cradle. so, several thousand years ago-- we don't know precisely when-- a man saw an eagle catch a rabbit or a fox, and had the ingenious idea to hunt in partnership with it. it blows my mind that it's even real. it's like something out of "lord of the rings," but you can do it. >> pelley: lauren mcgough was in high school when she dedicated her life to raptors. she traveled with us to the place she calls the cradle. 6,000 miles led us first to the mongolian capital of ulaan bataar. ♪ ♪ this civilization conquered the known world in the 13th century. the mongols ranged from asia to europe, the largest contiguous empire of all time. from here, we flew another 800 miles to bayan-oooölgii, where mongolia, russia, china and kazakhstan meet. this was the end of the road, but not the end of our journey. we crossed the open steppe, past wild bactrian camels with two humps-- a vanishing species, with only about 1,000 left in the world. our destination was a camp of nomads, people who introduced lauren mcgough to the golden eagle. >> mcgough: hello! ( laughs ) >> pelley: they hadn't seen her in two years. >> mcgough: it feels like i never left. ( laughter ) just in a few minutes of seeing everybody. such a magical place. >> pelley: now, how did a woman from oklahoma end up out here, in mongolia? >> mcgough: ah, well, i read a book on falconry. and it's like the fire was lit. i just knew i had to do it. and, as i was researching, i went to the library, and i found this old book that had black and white photos of eagle hunters from mongolia. so, you know, this beautiful shaggy horse, and this man with a giant eagle and a fox pelt on his horse. and it just looked like the most incredible thing. and i thought, "i have to see it, i have to do it." >> pelley: at the age of 17, her father, a former air force stealth pilot, brought her to mongolia. lauren returned five years later, with funding from a fulbright scholarship. then she earned a ph.d based on her work with the eagle hunters. >> mcgough: these are the people that can talk to animals. because they have relationships with goats, sheep, horses, camels, eagles. they have intimate knowledge of where snow leopards are and foxes are. there's no agriculture here because the land's not arable. so, they've ingeniously learned to domesticate animals, and then build these unique relationships with wild animals. >> pelley: it's a relationship that she learned from people who endure the life of 19th century ranchers. they are kazakhs, who make up just 4% of mongolians. they have no running water, no e