Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Gold! Gold! Gold!

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Believe it or not, one of the most valuable elements on the Periodic Table was also the first one that was discovered by humans. Since then it has held a prominent spot in almost every culture on Earth. We use it to signify first place, we use it as a metaphor for important rules, and for thousands of years, it was the basis of money. It was even the obsession of James Bond’s greatest villain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Believe it or not, one of the most valuable elements on the periodic table was also one of the first that was discovered by humans. Since then, it's held a prominent spot in almost every culture on Earth. We used it to signify first place. We used it as a metaphor for important rules, and for thousands of years it was the basis of money. It was even the obsession of James Bond's greatest villain. Learn more about gold, its physical properties, and its role in human culture on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind start racing the moment? your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow?

That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quote. quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. I've done a few episodes

in the past on particular elements on the periodic table. Aluminum was an extremely rare metal and unknown for much of history until it became extremely abundant in the 20th century. The story of uranium was mostly about its uses as a radioactive element. The story of gold, is altogether different from anything else. And let's start with the physical properties of gold. Gold as an element is rather heavy with an atomic weight of 79. It's somewhat rare and brilliant colored. Perhaps most importantly, gold doesn't usually bond with anything,

and it's one of the least reactive chemical elements. In the introduction, I mentioned that gold is probably the first element discovered by humans. This is because almost every other element isn't found in its base elemental form in nature. Common elements like iron or silicon are usually found bound to oxygen or other elements in rock. Gold, when found in nature, is usually just pure elemental gold. Along with silver and platinum, it's one of the only elements that's found this way. In addition to being shiny and non-reactive, gold is also the most malleable element and the most ductal element. Small bits of gold have been found in Paleolithic caves dating back 40,000 years.

Honestly, it should come as no surprise that it was discovered that, early. It isn't hard to see why early humans would pick up a piece of gold as it's naturally shiny and pretty. We found gold artifacts in the archaeological record, almost as far back as we found artifacts from early civilizations. Gold Egyptian artifacts have been found dating back to before the first Egyptian dynasty. When they found the tomb of King Tutankhammon, they found literally 1,500 kilograms of solid gold. The reason it's such a rare find is that for centuries robbers would loot tombs looking for gold. Finding an unwelcome. molested tomb was extremely unlikely. The Bible mentions gold all over the place. In the Old Testament,

there was the golden calf and the Jewish temple had a golden menorah. In the New Testament, the wise men brought a gift of gold to Jesus, and of course there's the golden rule. Greek mythology had the story of King Midas, who wished that everything he touched would turn to gold, and he had his wish granted. There actually were three kings named Midas, who ruled in a land called Phrygia in what is today Turkey. Another Greek myth was about Jason and the Argonauts and the golden flee. And believe it or not, this legend also may have had a grain of truth. It turns out that using a sheep's fleece was a technique used for acquiring gold. The fleece would be put in a stream and the hairs of the fleece would catch small flakes of gold on it. The fleece would then be taken

out of the river and the gold would be beaten or combed out of it. Ornamentation and jewelry were only one of the two major uses for gold in antiquity. The other, of course, was money. Gold historically made a very good basis for money. Didn't react with anything so he couldn't degrade it. It was an element so you couldn't destroy it, it was rare so it was limited, and it also could be easily melted down and divided or combined into larger or smaller lots. The oldest gold coins that we have discovered date back 2,600 years ago from the Anatolia region of Turkey. Not soon after, evidence of Chinese gold coins show up as well. The Ying yuan dates back to the 5th century BC, and the yuan is the name of the Chinese currency today.

In Mesopotamia, the base unit of gold was the talent. A talent was actually a unit of weight, so you could have a talent of gold or a talent of silver. Each talent was divided into 60 minas, which was in turn divided into 60 shekels. The divisions of 60 reflect the base 60 or a sexagessimal numbering system that they had. In Rome, the primary gold coin was the oreas. It initially had a value of 25 silver dinari and 100 bronze sesterci. As I've mentioned in previous episodes, the Romans didn't actually have a ton of technical innovations. However, one area they did innovate was in the area of gold mining.

They were the first to use large-scale hydraulic mining. They would literally run aqueducts to their mines and then store up water above and use the water to bust up rocks and soil. If you remember back to my episode on who was the richest person in all history, if you use gold as a measure of value, then a good case can be made for the West African king Manu Musa. He had so much gold that when he traveled to Mecca on the haj, he destroyed the economies of the places he traveled through because he spent so much gold,

prices destabilized. Over in the New World, there were very different takes on gold. From Mexico to the south, cultures used a great deal of gold for ornamentation and jewelry. The Aztec word for gold was literally god excrement. However, they didn't use gold for money or as a unit of exchange. In North America above Mexico, there was very little use for gold. To most of the native peoples, it wasn't seen as valuable as there was little practical application for it. Something like obsidian or copper, which could be used as a knife,

was far more valuable. The existence of gold in the new world was one of the driving forces behind the conquest of the Americas, especially the Spanish. The primary focus of most Spanish colonies, especially initially, was the extraction and exportation of gold and silver. In fact, they had an entire system set up designed to send gold from Manila to Acapulco to Veracruz to Spain. Up until the 20th century, gold was the basis for almost every monetary system in the world. Even if they used silver coins or paper currency, ultimately it was all based on gold. Paper money could, in theory, be converted to gold. This system eventually disappeared in the later half of the 20th century,

and the United States officially went off the gold standard in 1971. Even though it's no longer used as currency, gold production and gold mining have never ceased. If anything, technology has allowed for more gold to be mined than ever before. Approximately 75% of all gold ever mined in history was mined in just the last 100 years, and two-thirds of all the gold since just 1950. The total amount of gold that's been mined throughout all human history is estimated to be around 200 million kilograms. About 2.5 to 3 million kilograms are mined every year. The total value of all the gold in the world would be about, depending on the price of gold today, $9.6 trillion. Or to put that another way,

all of the gold in the world is worth about the same as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook combined. Given the density of gold, that actually doesn't make for a very large volume, however, all of the mine gold in the world throughout history would only fill up two Olympic-sized swimming pools. The other place where there is a lot of gold, even though it's very hard to extract is seawater. On average, there are 10 to 30 parts per quadrillion in seawater. That's very, very dilute, but there's a lot of seawater in the oceans. In total, there would be 15 million kilograms of gold in all the world's oceans. I've talked about the use of gold for money and jewelry. For thousands of years, that was the primary use of gold. And today, that hasn't changed. 90% of all gold

today is used for either jewelry or as a store of value. However, there are some industrial uses of gold. As I mentioned before, one of the primary attributes of gold is that it's non-reactive and doesn't corrode. While gold is a good electrical conductor, silver and copper are better and cheaper. However, silver and copper can both corrode. If you want something that's non-corrosive, gold is a very good option. Another attribute of gold is the fact that it's very malleable. This means it can be hammered down to an extremely thin foil known as gold leaf. The average thickness of gold leaf is only one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter. The process of applying gold leaf to something is called gilding.

Gilding is a common way to make something appear golden without actually making it out of gold. Despite what richy-rich comic books might have taught you, solid gold anything, is almost always impractical due to weight and cost. You can actually buy gold leaf quite cheap on places like Amazon, and the reason is because you aren't actually getting that much gold. Gold leaf is sometimes used as a food additive. There's pretty much no reason to ever use it other than to make something seem extravagant. Nonetheless, you can ingest gold without problem, as it is non-toxic and doesn't react with anything. One of the other industrial uses of gold takes advantage of its ability to reflect electromagnetic radiation. It's sometimes used to coat telescope mirrors or the surface of high-end compact

disc. The visors of helmets on spacesuits will often have a gold foil so thin that it's translucent, enough to reflect sunlight, but still allow astronauts to see through it. The largest consumers of gold in the world today are far and away China and India. It isn't just that they have the world's largest populations, although that's a big part of it, but also that their cultures have traditionally viewed gold as a way to store wealth. In addition to being the largest consumer, China is also the world's largest producer. Gold has been a subject of fascination for humans ever since we were writing on cave walls. No matter how digitized and virtual our world becomes, our fascination with gold will probably

always exist. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you two can have it read on the show. This is gold, Mr. Bond. All my life I've been in love with its color, its brilliance, it's divine heaviness. I welcome any enterprise that will increase my stock.