How come gold is considered so precious???...tom science?

Answer 1

At one time Aluminum was more precious then gold. Then they found out how common it was.

Answer 2

Gold is considered precious because it is not plentiful. However, it's a soft metal that conducts electricity well and resists corrosion so it does have some practical use.

From wikipedia:

"Gold has been known and highly valued since prehistoric times. It may have been the first metal used by humans and was valued for ornamentation and rituals. Egyptian hieroglyphs from as early as 2600 BCE describe gold, which king Tushratta of the Mitanni claimed was as "common as dust" in Egypt. Egypt and Nubia had the resources to make them major gold-producing areas for much of history. Gold is also mentioned several times in the Old Testament. The south-east corner of the Black Sea was famed for its gold. Exploitation is said to date from the time of Midas, and this gold was important in the establishment of what is probably the world's earliest coinage in Lydia between 643 and 630 BCE."

Answer 3

For every ton of rock they only get a tiny amount of Gold out. The running costs to process the gold and to excavate rock from the depths of the earth are staggering. It is so precious because it is only found in selective areas of the world.

Answer 4

Hi Tom. The main reason that it has become so valuable is that gold is chemically inert. It won't turn your king's ring finger green, it won't poison you,and it won't cause quirks in your chemistry, or in a chalice make your wine taste funny. The kings of the past and their personal chemists created a demand for gold...Gold...GOLD... Also a note: a grain of gold weighs the same as a grain of Egyptian wheat (in a non-drought year) . This is the origin of the gold standard.

Answer 5

you asked for it

gold was suposedly,all ready mined here on Earth about 300.000 years ago in the mines of zimbabwe ,which means deep deposit.
it has been a precious metal for ever not only by us but by Aliens as well(or so the story goes)

the story of Adam and Eve was a symbolic representation of the creation of a slave race who mined gold for an Anunaki ,who was known as the creator.
who was ,not a god but a extraterestrial.

and his descendents ,the iluminati .have been behind the theft of gold from all civilisations here on Earth,ever since

the gold of the Egyptians,Babylonia,china,India,Central America,the Romans,and the illuminati were there
.the knight templers stole gold from the Middle East and Europe(more iluminati)
.
In Africa,the Americas and who knows where else the Spanish and British and Dutch kings did the same ,again all related people and all free mason elite.

Now in these last two centuries the gold mines of South Africa are in the hands of the Openheimers who belong to the same elite,

the questions is .
where are these inumerable thousands of tons of gold now .???????????????????,
there is not enough space in the Vatican

Are they still here on Earth .?????????

there are some tons ,thats for sure ,in fort knox and the bank of England
but we are talking about ,ton and tons and tons over many centuries ,of many civilisations
.
the mind maybe boggles , could a lot of it have left the planet.

the Alien that was captured and died ,(which story was buried by the CIA),was wearing an gold arm bracelet with two points that were inserted deep into his upper arm.and it was stated that the gold was precious because of its conducting properties.

somehow when we get to Aliens we also come across gold .isnt that strange.

would be interesting if someone can estimate how much gold has been mined in the world from now back to ancient times .just a very rough calculation,

and how much there is suposed to be around in the deposits of banks

there are FIGURES AVAILABLE which say how much ,but i just dont believe them.there must have been much .much more
we are talking about gold mining spread over 300.000 years , by countless civilisations ,and many of those we dont even know about,as all of the information has been lost.
for example
in the amazon have been found shards of cooking pots that must have measured two metres in diameter ,to cook food for hundreds of people ,on man made mounds in the jungle,and many hundreds of these mounds were discovered
suggesting a civilisation of millions of workers,
these mounds went together with an artificial soil ,made with carbon made from burning plants, at least half a metre deep (top soil in the jungle is no more than a few inches .and the natural soil is extremely poor ,to poor to support agriculture)this soil has been found spread over thousands of hectares on the colombian border.Suggesting a huge agriculture ,to support a huge civilisation ,the only remains are the scattered Indian tribes that number not even a hundred people each ,but they have a complicated hierachy within their leadership .which suggest that their origin was far far bigger .like having a full cabinet of 30 ministers for a village of 80 people ,this makes no sense at all.they are all that remains of this lost civilisation .

what has all of this to do with gold .is that this is the location of the legendary el Dorado.

so what about all of the evidence that has been lost forever

lots of gold mined ,but very little exists
????????????????????????????????

Answer 6

Basically gold has the ideal features of a currency: rarity, uniqueness, durability and divisiblity. As a result it was an ideal currency.You certainly could attempt to use someting like salt or slaves or pearls as a currency, but they all have problems

If you don’t store salt very carefully it gradually loses the more soluble ions and loses taste. That makes it useless as a way to store wealth. Even treasuries couldn’t readily store salt to keep it fresh and the common man certainly couldn’t bury salt in the back garden for safe keeping. The fact that salt can lose flavour and still look like salt also means that the currency can be easily watered. People discovered early on that gold is gold and it becomes noticably different in its properties and reactivity if it is bastardised. That isn’t true of salt, where I can mix large amounts of calcium chloride through your table salt without you noticing immediately.

Added to that salt isn’t rare. It is super-abundant but time consuming to extract. What that means is that as salt values increased there was more incentive for coastal people to extract salt and drive the currency down. That made for a very unstable currency, which would be added to precisely because salt is consumed when it is used. An army supplier could set out today with 100 camels’ worth of salt and when he arrives at the market he might only be able to afford 10 camels because salt has been devalued.

All other materials available to ancient societies also had failings that made them unsuitable as currency. Pearls are durable and hard to counterfeit, but indivisible. You can’t pay someone half a pearl because the act of cutting it devalues it. But you can pay someone an ounce of gold or a thousandth of an ounce without devaluing the material. Livestock or slaves might be valuable, but they decrease in value over time. Artworks might be durable but can be easily faked and so forth.

For a material to be useless as currency in ancient societies they needed to be rare, unique, durable and divisible. If any one of those features was lacking they weren’t a suitable currency. Ultimately what that meant was that metals were the only real currency option. And gold, being the rarest and most durable of the metals available became the currency standard, usually followed by silver for much the same reasons.

The actual process of currency adoption would have been fairly gradual and organic. Ones kings and chiefs started to value ostentatious wealth gold would immediately have acquired some value. And from there you get a positive feedback. Kings want gold to show off, so other kings want more gold. Other kings wanting gold creates market for gold that drives up prices making it even more valuable to kings wanting to show off. Almost immediately demand outstrips supply simply because it is rare. And because there is a constant demand for gold it becomes a very safe way to store wealth because you know you can sell it whenever you need and it never spoils and never radically devalues. And because it is a safe way to store wealth it becomes valuable for that reason alone, driving prices still higher, making it more attractive as a way of showing off showing off and even safer as way of storing wealth and even more valuable…..

Answer 7

It's shiny, heavy and malleable - a small amount of it can be stretched greatly without much heating. Theoretically, there's a more limited supply of it than, say, silver, and less silver than copper. This is why their prices run $400 to $12 to $1 per troy oz.

Answer 8

the rarest a mineral is the more valuable it is.
Although gold is old school since the process of titanium and platinum, I don't think governments will change their economy and switch to another mineral.

Plus it's really shiny and pretty it makes me smile and blush and giggle like a schoolgirl

Answer 9

because it is hard to purify and because not a lot of people exactly have access to it except in the stores... it has, though decreased in value a great deal since its first discovery... and now, even if you did find some, the gov't takes it away anyway...

Answer 10

because it is 1)rare 2)does not tarnish 3) conducts electricty fantastically 4))is very shiny