Was ancient gold only valued because it was rare, beautiful and sturdy?

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I think of it as sturdier pretty things, as opposed to today, where gold has a myriad of purposes.

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Gold was basically the first workable metal. Gold doesn’t oxidize (rust or tarnish) in its natural state, when almost every other metal does. So many forms of gold don’t need to be refined, only separated from the rock that it’s in. So people figured out how to work gold before any other metal. And since it was the only material like itself (a metal), it gained value and status. Modern valuation of gold is a long chain of using gold as a symbol of value and status, even after other more useful metals began to be worked.

edit: grammar

Anonymous 0 Comments

It was a very rare metal that no one at home could make (without a star experiencing a super nova in the living room). Any way, the metal could then be used for coins since there was a finite amount, they could keep control and regulation of the coins in the economy. no one could forge coins without actually having gold to begin with. It would have been near impossible and pointless in the end to create fake money if you needed real gold to do so.

Bonus satire:
Of course after a while we were like what if we make paper money that’s easier to transport and use, and for however much gold you have we will print that much money?! Then they were like here’s a better idea, what if we just use only printed money, screw gold, and we can better regulate the economy. Annnnd then they were like f that noise we will just control how much the dollar is worth and it doesn’t even matter if you have paper or gold. They’re smart because now we can argue about the price of things but really they control the worth of the money to begin with so our arguments are mute in the end.