eli5 what made people think that silver was such a precious resource?
In: 18
It’s shiny and rare.
It also doesn’t break down like other metals so it keeps its value with time. It is relatively easy to melt down and form into interesting shapes.
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Silver isn’t very common. It’s nice to look at. Easy to make into jewelry. And is useful. It’s almost as good at that all as gold.
It would be traded at value, but then got standardized in coins.
We still use these precious metals for technology today which hella keep their value up.
Other metals have been valuable to. Aluminum was very expensive until we found how to mass produce it easily
Like all things that enjoy status as currency, it’s relatively scarce. It’s malleable with a reasonably achievable melting point, making it easy to smelt into coins, jewelry, and other valuables. And though it does tarnish, it doesn’t rust as many other metals do, so you don’t run the risk of leaving all your silver in a vault and opening it in twenty years to find the damp got in and rusted away a good chunk of its value. Other than that, it’s just shiny and humans, like crows, are fascinated by glittering, shining things.
Things like silver, gold, copper, and jewels became valuable, because leaders started to like fancy things amd jewelry. Shiney metals and gems were what was used. These things became currencies, because people knew they could always be traded to wealthy people for other stuff. Then people started trading it with eachother, because there would always be a buyer. Eventually people just become used to using it.
Silver also has antimicrobial properties, and in the thousands of years before before we understood germs and bacteria, it was though to have “magical” properties. Hence why vampires can’t see their reflections (mirrors used to be made from silver) and why silver is considered effective against werewolves.
https://www.addmaster.co.uk/blog/a-shortish-history-of-silver-as-an-antimicrobial
https://www.woundsource.com/blog/history-silver-in-wound-care
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19566416/
In the old days, things were valuable generally for three reasons:
1) they were rare
2) people wanted them
3) You could be sure what they were
Silver isn’t as good as gold at those things, but it’s not bad. It’s rare, it’s pretty, and it’s relatively easy to tell pure silver from impure silver: because it’s relatively dense, it’s hard to fake it.
Now, the one problem with this is mercury and lead: Dipping lead in mercury gives a result that is slightly *more* dense than silver (so you leave the lead slightly hollow, or mix it with something less dense) and looks similar (which is why mercury is called “quicksilver”).
I think the main part of gold and silver is their low reactivity. They don’t “rust” lack of a better term and don’t readily react with common items. The fact it doesn’t tarnish gave some value.
Yeah any it’s stupid rare
It was easily extracted from (most of) the rocks it could be found in(but not galena), has a relatively low melting point, is easily shaped even when cool, and has a nice shine to it when polished. In ancient times, metals that could be easily extracted and melted were regarded as more useful.
An interesting note on some of the comments here: many people are, correctly, pointing to the fact that Silver was valued for its low reactivity and tendency not to tarnish.
However, if you’ve ever held silver before you will likely have noticed that it was indeed tarnished, and that exposing it to air will cause it to tarnish again in short order. Were people blind hundreds of years ago? Have the chemical properties of silver changed in the last few hundred years?
Sort of. See, silver does not react readily with oxygen, carbon, or nitrogen. But it does react with sulfur. In, say, 1400, sulfuric compounds in the air were all but nonexistent. But then, we learned about fossil fuels and coal power. That led to the rise of factories, pumping large amounts of Sulfur Dioxide into the atmosphere. As a result, ever since about 1800, silver has tarnished on contact with air.
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