What made man pick gold as a value?

Answer 1

I think that it was for several reasons.
1 - Gold occurs in alluvial deposits, thus being easily collected;
2 - It´s a soft and malleable metal, making it very easy to shape it in various forms;
3 - It´s a shiny metal, of a nice yellowish color, very attractive;
4 - It´s a rare metal, and things that are rare are valuable.

Answer 2

When we were a barter economy, we found a stone that when you rub it with pure gold you had one color, and another color when the gold was mixed with other metals. We called this a touchstone. After that we could always tell the quality of the gold, and that made it a dependable commodity to trade for all other commodities.

Answer 3

Its beauty, rarity, malleability, and permanence (it doesn't corrode). As a commodity, its price goes up , because the money used to buy gold gets less and less in value as greedy governments print more and more worthless paper money. As a standard (backing for money or as money itself), gold holds its value and prevents inflation from occurring.

Answer 4

excellent question
i've often wondered that.
I would imagine that it is beautiful when it is pure. I've seen gold ore and it's not even gold, so how they figured it out is quite the mystery to me
on another note - during biblical times, SALT was more valuable than gold,
as well, at the mid millenium, pepper and tea took their turns

Answer 5

Gold was picked because of its beauty, rarity and malleability.

Answer 6

Gold is scarce and yet beautiful.

Answer 7

men all wanted it so it came to have a value

Answer 8

For the same reason men do everything else..... because it turns chicks on

Answer 9

I guess its rarity. If there were a LOT of it, it would be worth much much less.

Answer 10

the fact that we like shiny things