In 1324, the Emperor of Mali, Mansa Musa, set out for Mecca with a caravan of sixty thousand men and an estimated twelve tons of gold. The story goes that as he passed through Cairo, he gave away so much of it – to the poor, to merchants and to officials – that the local price of gold collapsed for the next decade.
It is a striking story, but it is hardly unique. For thousands of years, people have reached for gold when they wanted to show what mattered. The Romans used gold as currency; families have passed down gold jewellery as heirlooms; rulers have chosen gold to mark what was most precious or powerful. Gold has long stood in for wealth, importance and the hope that something might last. All of which leaves us with a question: why gold? Out of everything the earth offers, what is it about this particular metal that has kept our attention for so long?
What is fascinating is that gold is older than the Earth itself. The gold we hold in our hands or wear as jewellery was formed in ancient stars, long before our planet came into being. To make gold, you need the catastrophic violence of a supernova – or, as astronomers confirmed in 2017, the collision of two neutron stars. That year, gravitational-wave detectors picked up the merger of two such stars in a galaxy 130 million light-years away, and within hours, telescopes around the world watched the explosion produce heavy elements, gold among them. Atoms like that travelled across the universe, eventually settling here and becoming part of the landscape beneath our feet. That means the ring or the necklace we wear every day carries a history that reaches far beyond our planet.
The story of gold's origins is still unfolding. Scientists are continually learning more about gold's properties, from its ability to conduct electricity with almost no resistance to its increasingly important role in medical research and nanotechnology. Some astronomers are searching for gold in asteroids, hoping to unlock new chapters in humanity's relationship with this extraordinary metal.
Humans started loving gold almost as soon as we encountered it
The oldest worked gold ever found is at the Varna necropolis in Bulgaria. It dates to around 4,600 BCE – more than 6,500 years ago, before written language, before the wheel, before agriculture had fully settled in some parts of Europe. Archaeologists have recovered more than six thousand gold objects from the site, including the burial of a chieftain wearing roughly a kilo and a half of gold on his body.
Even in those days, gold wasn't valuable because it was useful. It was too soft for tools or weapons, too rare to use for anything practical. People must have simply found it beautiful – bright, untarnished, different from anything else around. Gold's appeal always seemed to be about how it looked and lasted, not what it could do. Even cultures that never crossed paths landed on the same idea. Again and again, people decided that this metal was special and sacred.
The ancient Egyptians called gold "the flesh of the gods." It was linked to the sun god Ra, and pharaohs were buried with as much gold as their families could possibly gather. (Just think of Tutankhamun's burial mask – about ten kilograms of solid gold – still drawing crowds of tourists years later.) Meanwhile, the Inca in South America saw gold as "the sweat of the sun." In India, gold has been a sacred wedding gift for at least three thousand years. Whether we look to China, West Africa, or Mesoamerica, gold was reserved for the most important rituals, gifts and symbols of lasting value.
"The ancient Egyptians called gold 'the flesh of the gods.' The Inca saw it as 'the sweat of the sun.' Whether we look to China, West Africa, or Mesoamerica, gold was reserved for the most important rituals."
Has anything else ever come close to holding this kind of symbolic status? In some places, jade has carried a similar weight – especially in China, where it stands for purity and virtue. Silver has also been cherished, sometimes chosen for ceremonies or sacred objects. But nothing else seems to have matched gold's ability to cross so many boundaries and hold its place as a symbol of lasting value.
Part of the answer comes down to chemistry
Gold has a few properties that really set it apart. It does not corrode or tarnish, so a piece buried for two thousand years can come out looking just as it did when it went in. Maybe that is why so many ancient gold artifacts have survived to this day. Gold also has a way of catching the light, sparkling and giving off a warmth that no other metal quite matches. It is dense, so it feels substantial in our hands or against our skin. And it is soft enough to shape with simple tools – even early humans could hammer it cold with a stone – yet durable enough to outlast empires. It is also rare, but not impossibly so. Gold is scarce enough to feel precious, but not so rare that people couldn't find it in riverbeds and streams across the world.
And gold's story is still unfolding. Gold is engineered into our smartphones, used in medical advances and traded in stock markets. Its reputation as a safe haven for investors persists, even as society and technology change. Gold's roles keep expanding, yet its promise of endurance and value remains.
And yet, for all its new roles, gold still holds on to the meanings it has carried for centuries. Every innovation builds on a foundation of symbolism and tradition that runs deep.
What gold has gathered over the millennia
Over the millennia, gold has gathered meanings the way water collects sediment. It has been the metal of the sun, standing in for warmth, light and life – and the metal of eternity, chosen because it never changes. Across cultures, gold has marked weddings, crowned rulers, filled religious vessels, and served as the ultimate gift or dowry. For a long stretch of history, it even sat at the centre of our economies. And it has become the metal we inherit – the chain your grandmother left you, or the ring that has been passed on across generations.
"Maybe that's why a piece of gold never quite feels casual, even when we wear it in the most ordinary way. We're carrying something older than ourselves – older than language or agriculture."
Maybe that's why a piece of gold never quite feels casual, even when we wear it in the most ordinary way. We're carrying something older than ourselves, older than language or agriculture – something that, in every age and on every continent, has meant the same thing. A piece of wonder.
