Gold Throughout History: 4 Eras of Gold

Gold is a very important element in the life we live today. However, if it wasn’t for ancient people, there’s a chance we wouldn’t have known how precious of a material gold is.

Since the beginning of time, gold is seen to be a great desire in many societies all over the world, the new and the old ones. And to this day, nothing screams wealth and luxury more than the yellow metal. So in this article, we’ll highlight 4 eras of gold throughout history, from the first mine up to COVID-19.

Spoiler alert: gold was significantly important in all 4 eras, (including the pandemic).

The First To Ever Mine Era

To cut a long story short, Nobody knows who and when humans first began to mine gold. However, gold was definitely among the first metals to be ever mined. This precious metal exists predominantly in the Earth's crust in its native form and isn’t chemically combined with other elements.

Although the exact date of the first gold mine still remains a mystery, we know that the first people to use gold on a considerable scale were the ancient Egyptians.

Ancient Egyptians found gold 5000 years ago and used it to make exquisite objects as early as the predynastic period (4th millennium BC) before the Egyptians had even established a written language. Initially, gold was exclusively reserved for the use of kings to display economic power and luxury. Then later, pharaohs would order their eternal resting place, tombs and temples, to be lavishly gold-plated. A particular example would be, the tomb of Tutankhamun, the young pharaoh who ruled Egypt in the 14th century B.C. Furthermore, in 1922, Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered gold items in the tomb of Tutankhamun that signified his wealth and prestige.

Gold In Graves Era

Another early use of gold appears to be from a site called Varna Necropolis or Varna cemetery in Bulgaria which dates back to 4600 BC.

The site is a burial ground for a number of gold artifacts that include more than 200 graves which many of them contained gold and other metal finds. This indicates that gold was a status object for members of society.

However, Not all graves seemed to have been treated equally as some individuals were buried with more golden objects. This shows some type of a chiefdom society and different levels of power, where one individual did own more gold than the others. Just like the life we live today.

Gold Post The Two World Wars Era

Many many many years later, after decades of conflicts, two world wars and global inflation eventually causing the infamous Great Depression, world leaders with the United States specifically, came together under the Bretton Woods Agreements in 1944.

The United States and their 44 allied member countries agreed to a system that created a gold exchange standard where the price of gold was fixed to the U.S. dollar. This system was created for the desire to regulate the international monetary economic stability post World War II.

To add, the U.S. dollar was chosen for the Bretton Woods system because it was the most superior at the time since the United States had the strongest economy coming out of the Second World War, unlike European nations.

Moreover, since the United States held the majority of the world's gold, most countries simply secured the value of their currency to the dollar instead of gold. As a result, most countries didn’t need to convert their currency to gold, as the dollar had replaced it.

The Bretton Woods system lasted into the early 1970s.

Gold Vs Covid-19 Era

Nobody in their wildest dream would have ever seen COVID-19 coming. However, the virus was not the only shocking thing to happen that year.

Gold prices amid the pandemic performed so well, reaching an all time high of US$1,950.85 per ounce, which drove someone like Warren Buffett who rooted against gold for years to get into it. People who had already bought gold before the virus made a profit and the ones who didn’t, started to as gold proved again to be one of the safest havens people can resort to during financial crises and inflation. After all, nobody can predict what is going to happen, but it’s clear that of all the golden ears, this one is surprisingly the best.

The Future OF Gold

What does the future hold for gold? Just like anything, it’s impossible to accurately predict the future of gold. Many have tried throughout history but have significantly failed.

Every day, thousands of people and experts  around the world take all of the metrics involved in the price of gold and try to predict its future. However, even if they guess right, that information will remain a mere guess. Nobody predicted the past right, and nobody saw the high price of gold amid COVID-19 coming. Thus, If you want to get rich from gold, then you need to find experts you trust and a safe place to buy.

For example, go check Minted; No contract, no commitment, just gold! And if this isn’t impressive enough, wait till you know that you can get gold through Minted for as little as £1 per day!