Bob Moriarty wrote in his August 27th piece that the Precipitation Theory "has been around for at least 130 years".

I did some digging and found an 1897 edition of the "Mineral Resources of the United States" that actually discussed the Precipitation Theory for the origin of the gold at South Africa's Witwatersrand Basin. See pages 172-173:

http://http://books.google.com/books?id=ouwoAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover

Go Novo!!