GOLD THROUGH THE AGES
“THIS LUST FOR GOLD HAS NOT BEEN UNIQUE TO ONE CULTURE OR ANOTHER� perspective, I wanted to investigate it from a more personal angle. From as far back in history as we can trace, gold has been considered a precious asset. And this lust for gold has not been unique to one culture or another, but it has occurred across cultures, separated by vast distances, which indicates that the high value of gold was established even before we have historical recordings of the spread of civilizations. Significant gold artifacts include the intricate "Colombian Jet" (above) from ~800 BCE and the Bulgarian Varna Burial Tomb artifacts (below) estimated to have been buried ~5000 BCE.... (which some use to suggest that the value of Gold may have even been established by an alien civilization). Given all this gold phenomena, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on the question of why do we humans love gold so much? And how long that's likely to continue? As well as whether a lust for Gold is simply baked into our human DNA after all this time? You may have read the classic book The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho and wondered if the concept of changing common elements from one of non value into one of extreme value was possible. If you haven't read the book I would recommend it, as it's an easy read and contains a number of socially evolved gems of wisdom throughout. I initially read the book years ago because Tim Robbins said it was the best book he'd ever read, and I liked
the movie Shawshank Redemption which Robbins starred in, so I figured his book suggestion must be worth the read (how about that for a bit of flawed logic...). But it did turn out to be an interesting tale for the deeper meaning of life, as well as the literal component alluding the idea that elements could be transmuted by some mystical process that was only understood by a select fraternity of alchemists. Prior to The Alchemist, and after, I remained curious about when the act of scientific alchemy (turning lead into gold) would become mainstream, and possibly crash the worldwide value of gold. We know that today Lead (Pb) can be transmuted into Gold (Au) by a "simple" nuclear reaction. In fact, this has been performed as early as the 1950's and is carried out by tossing one element into a particle accelerator and smashing it into another particle in order to create a collision strong enough to swap a few protons and neutrons, and thus create the new element of interest. But that said, we're still a long way from doing it in our living rooms or at any mass scale, because the process is very expensive, requires rare and specialized equipment... and the whole radioactivity thing freaks some people out.... (after transmutation some elements may remain radioactive for quite a while). Gold's international cash value remains such an interesting phenomenon, as unlike diamonds (which have high market value but much less cash value) gold can be
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ROYALTY