It is a rare and intriguing quality that only a few things possess to be perceived in the same way by different people from different areas of the Earth and from different epochs. Gold has this quality, fascinating people throughout human history. The reason for this attraction was not a scientific one: gold was perceived due to its special color and sheen as supremely beautiful, whereas due to unchangeable quality and to the fact it was scarce it was perceived as economically valuable and used as currency.
Its artistic beauty and storage and trade value were expressed by artisans in creating rings and brooches and necklaces or more prosaic coins of it, namely displays of perpetual beauty or embodiments of commercial value. People were so much attracted by the decorative possibilities of gold that went far beyond using it for vessels and cutlery to putting it in the form of gold leaf in drinks or sprinkling it over food. Moreover, this attraction is evidenced not only by contemporaries but gold has been used by artisans already since the Chalcolithic. The history of human appropriation, of materialization of the sense of property took not only the form of land but that of gold too, if we are to look no farther back than at the Spanish conquistadors.
Besides, a history of greed could not possibly skip this most coveted metals of all. It doomed Native American peoples as it doomed South Africans for most part of their modern history. Gold was not only the material display of riches but also the concrete means of power and destruction of the weaker. Especially once the technology developed enough to enable humans to appropriate more of the object of their eternal fascination.
What is definitely a piece of black humor is that gold was ardently loved and targeted in utter contrast with its neutrality as a chemical element. In spite as it were of its apparent warmth, it is nothing to interact with. Cold as gold’ would be an appropriate depiction of its chemical absence of contact. No air, water or rust can affect it. This is the true secret of its remaining identical to itself over time. It is immune to human consumption; all that people can do is seemingly possess it for a short while.
Exactly because of its unchangeable quality, people have always venerated it. As they have venerated god for being ever beautiful, young and valuable.
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