What makes colorful, shiny minerals so appealing to us humans?
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Bright colors make your monkey brain produce happy chemicals. As a previous poster mentioned, something shiny is evolutionarily linked to water, but bright colors are also linked to high-nutrition foods like berries and such. Our brains developed over time to “reward us emotionally” for finding and having these things available to us in order to further incentivize survival (& reproduction).
Add that in with the lengthy socioeconomic history of the desirability of gems for signaling wealth, beauty, status, or even for spiritual reasons, you have created a highly coveted item.
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