Preface
Looking at ancient and modern times, China and foreign countries, up and down for 3,000 years, since our civilization began to prosper, gold has always been a "hard currency".
This is not limited to the mainland. In the United States, gold has always been the raw material for the production of money, and even gold is the currency itself.
But why? There are so many rare metals, why can gold become a precious material or even replace or become a currency to buy things, while other rare metals cannot?
All of the statements in this article are based on reliable sources and are reproduced at the end of this article
Rare gold
To understand why gold is rare, we must first look at the process of its formation.
Nowadays, people like to use diamond rings for marriage proposals, and young people also think gold is cheesy, but they don't know that gold is really the most romantic substance in the world.
The commerciality of diamonds is all speculation, and the diamonds themselves can be artificially made; And the essence of jadeite is nothing more than the combination of chromium-containing sulfides and minerals;
But gold has been around since the early days of the universe.
They fuse with light elements to become heavy elements through conditions such as supernova explosions, and are brought to the earth when the earth is formed to merge with the earth.
Gold exists in the interior of the earth for eternity, relying on volcanic eruptions to bring gold to the earth's crust to form gold ore belts, gold ore sources, and gold placer deposits over a long period of time.
Therefore, the formation of gold requires extreme heat higher than volcanic eruptions, high-pressure environments deep in the earth, crustal movements, and migration conditions for magmatic activity.
It is precisely because of these demanding requirements that gold is almost impossible to produce and manufacture, and they are truly "gifts" from the universe.
Europe: Gold = status, rights
According to research, the history of human wearing of gold jewelry can be traced back to ancient Egypt, when the ancient Egyptians believed that "gold is the sun that can be touched" and silver represents the moon.
As a result, these two metals were first widely used, mostly in a religious sense, and in ancient Egyptian texts in 4000 BC it was recorded that "one part of gold is equal to two parts of silver".
Because of the perishable nature of gold, they were often used to make the bones of gods, and the gold masks of the later Egyptian pharaohs were also representative of gold jewelry.
Also around 4000 BC, traces of gold objects appeared in the Varna culture of Bulgaria, and all of them were used as higher-end ritual objects rather than ornaments.
Since then, European royal families have had the custom of using gold as the main material to make crowns and scepters, which is why gold has been popular in Europe to this day.
In ancient Egypt, gold was even more important.
Because of its rust-free properties, gold was worshipped as the "flesh of the sun god" by fanatical believers, who used it to make many ornaments and even crowns and funerary masks for the pharaohs.
In ancient Rome, gold became a currency and a symbol of power, and gold began to flow from the exclusive use of the royal family to the aristocracy.
Craftsmen of this period put a lot of effort into the craftsmanship of gold jewelry, and gold jewelry and ornaments from ancient Rome would be exquisite and complicated from today's perspective.
The historical position of gold in China
In 2011, a well-preserved, clear layout and complete structure of a mausoleum was discovered in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, which is rare so far - the tomb of Liu He, Marquis of Haiyang in the Western Han Dynasty.
Source: Beijing News
In this tomb, archaeologists have found a total of 120 kilograms of gold objects, including gold cakes, horseshoe gold, lintoe gold, gold plates, and so on.
Even as a burial companion for the emperor, such a huge amount of gold shocked the excavators at that time.
The gold excavated from this tomb not only shows the ancient people's pursuit of gold, but also shows the long history of the ancient people's pursuit of gold.
So why did the ancients worship gold so much? Why did gold stand so much higher than other metallic elements in ancient times?
Before the 19th century, due to the limitations of the times, the level of human productivity could not do a large amount of mining and refining gold, so gold is the most rare metal.
The earliest country on the mainland that can be documented to add gold to the economic system was the state of Chu before 506 BC.
The name of this gold coin is "郢爰金coin", 郢 (yǐng) is the name of the capital city of Chu, and love is the weight unit of currency (1 jin in Chu time, now 250 grams).
After Qin Shi Huang unified the six kingdoms, in order to facilitate the development of the Qin state, currency, weights and measures, and writing were unified throughout the country.
The Golden Cloth Law is a monetary law promulgated to unify the currency, and gold and copper are the "gold" in the Golden Cloth Law.
After the Qin Dynasty, gold was not only used as currency, but also became a daily necessities and decorations for dignitaries and nobles to show their noble status.
For this reason, a fairly mature metallurgical process was developed in ancient times, and because of the excellent ductility of gold, there was also the existence of "golden jade clothes" in ancient Ming vessels.
Why were the ancients obsessed with gold?
The chemical properties of gold are very stable, no oxidation, no decay, no disintegration, no rust, in ancient times, it was even believed that taking gold can live with heaven and earth, and the Western Han Dynasty essayist Huan Kuan was convinced of this.
"Immortals eat gold and drink pearls, and then live with heaven and earth." - "Salt and Iron"
It is also because of this idea that gold is often added to the Dan prescription in the Taoist theory of pills, and Ge Hong, a famous alchemist and pharmacist in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, once proposed:
"Gold into the fire, a hundred refining will not be extinguished, buried in it, immortal. Taking these two things can refine the human body, so it can make people immortal. ”
All of this has aggravated the impression of the ancients to a certain extent, and the correlation between gold and longevity has been greatly exaggerated from this period.
In addition to the pursuit of immortality, gold also became a symbol of power to a certain extent in ancient times.
The Ming Dynasty Mingshenzong wore the golden silk dragon wing good crown, the total weight is 826 grams, the whole body is made of gold wire, the demeanor is majestic and lifelike.
In ancient and modern times, gold has also become a symbol of religion and a political bond.
Not only ancient Egypt, but also the Eastern Han Dynasty on the mainland began to have the method of "using copper as a person and gold as a body" to decorate the Buddha statue with gold.
After arriving at the people, wealthy families often create pure gold longevity locks for their children, which means peace, wealth and longevity.
All kinds of cultural relics have illustrated the rare status of gold in ancient times, and in modern times when mining and refining technology is more excellent, the status of gold has increased instead of decreasing, why is this?
Gold
Before the 19th century, due to the limitations of the times, the level of human productivity could not do a large amount of mining and refining gold, so gold is the most rare metal.
And what about modern times? Historically, there have been three forms of the gold standard, and they all used the gold content of a currency to determine the value of a currency.
Even if two countries that use this system want to trade, the exchange rate conversion between them is determined by the ratio of the gold content in the currency.
The gold standard was first proposed by Newton in the United Kingdom, and Britain was also the first country to implement the gold coin standard.
They used a fixed amount of gold to mint money, and the government mints accepted the people's gold to mint money.
Anyone can bring gold to the country's mint to mint gold at no charge or only a smelting fee.
The significance of this policy is to make the existence of money and the value of gold completely equal, and there will be no situation where the value of the currency itself is not equal to gold, and profiteers steal currency or use currency to smelt gold.
Source: Beijing News
This monetary system existed in name only after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when the gold standard came to an end when countries issued uncashed paper money to prohibit gold from leaving their countries.
Why is only gold reaching such heights?
We've previously looked at why gold is popular in terms of religious significance, superstition, and scarcity.
So now we can take a look at why there is no rare metal that can replace the status of gold in thousands of years of history.
Or: Why has gold been undefeated so far?
Although the smelting technology and mining technology were not good in ancient times, the existence of rare metals is not only gold, why can gold become a recognized symbol of wealth all over the world and even occupy a place in various fields of culture?
We can look to the periodic table to find out the answer to this question.
Seeing the 118 elements on this table, everyone must have understood.
The blue element is not a metal, and most of it is gas, which is obviously not comparable to gold.
Most of the two columns on the left can react with water, and even absorb water, and their chemical properties are not stable, so they cannot be easily carried or plasticized into currency circulation.
For example, lithium is very easy to react with oxygen when exposed to air, and it burns and ignites in the near future, so it obviously cannot be used.
After these unstable elements are removed, many elements remain, but most of these elements are radioactive and toxic.
For example, "radium" and "uranium", if these elements are used as currency circulation, they will be physically "melted" when they arrive at home.
Toxic substances obviously cannot be circulated in the market, and in addition to these, there are only the three most central rows of elements.
If we remove the metals that are difficult to counterfeit and the minerals that have a large amount of retention, there are only five kinds that can be left.
Removing rhodium and palladium, two elements that were only discovered in the 19th century, the remaining gold, silver and platinum are our favorite metals.
The melting point of platinum is as high as 1768.3 degrees Celsius, and there was no such smelting technology in ancient times, so platinum has become a decoration on people's bodies in modern times.
summary
Throughout history, gold has appeared countless times as a symbol of power and wealth in countries around the world.
People around the world discovered gold's rarity, stability and liquidity through thousands of years of trial and error, and finally gold has the status it has today.
In terms of decoration, gold also has countless exquisite handicrafts because of its excellent ductility, and then I will take you to see the excellent gold handicrafts of various countries.
Golden Silk Wing Good Crown (Ming Ming Tombs Museum)
Mandarin duck lotus petal pattern golden bowl (Shaanxi History Museum)
Tutankhamun Golden Mask (National Museum of Egypt)
St. Edward's Crown (in the custody of the British Crown)
Sources of information in this article:
Beijing News2024-05-10—An Interesting History of Gold: From the Alchemy of the Word Universe, the Golden Tongue of the Pharaohs to the Gold Standard and the Hegemony of the Dollar
Beijing News2023-12-15—The main tomb of Liu He, Marquis of Haiding, more than 2,000 years ago, is open to the public
Text/Four Precepts of Life
Editor/The Four Commandments of Life