In: Categories » Legal and finance » Historical facts » Gold
|
Gold, the most enduring, highly valued, and universally accepted monetary metal, is a chemical element represented by the symbol “Au” on the periodic table. A lustrous yellow metal, soft and malleable, gold does not tarnish or corrode, and is found in nature in a relatively pure form. From earliest times up to the present, the search for gold in nature has remained a never-ending quest. Man’s earliest chemical researches were inspired by a desire to find a means of converting other metals into gold. Because it did occur in pure form, gold was one of the first metals that drew man’s attention, but it was too soft to be a practical metal for making weapons and farming tools. As a metallic medium for artistic work, however, gold had no rivals and elaborate artistic productions in gold rank among the most prized relics of antiquity. Gold’s role as a monetary metal probably has its roots in the perception, widespread in ancient cultures, that gold was a divine substance. That gold suffered no deterioration with time and that its color resembled the color of the sun may have encouraged the belief that gold was a sacred substance. Gold adornments were a necessary part of religious temples, further underlining the connection between gold and the gods. The ancient Egyptians held gold to be sacred to Ra, the sun god, and vast quantities of gold went into the tombs of the divine pharaohs. A religion of ancient India taught that gold was the sacred semen of Agni, the fire god, and Agni’s priests accepted gold as a gift for priestly services. The Incas of South America saw gold and silver as the sweat of the sun and the moon, and these precious metals adorned the walls of their religious temples. After the Spaniards took the Indians’ gold and silver the natives substituted foil paper, and threw gold and silver-colored confetti into the air. The Maya of the Yucatan threw gold, silver, and jade sacrifices into their gods’ cenotes. (The cenotes were deep pools of water formed when a limestone surface collapsed.) The legend of El Dorado propelled Spain into one of the greatest searches in history, ending with the exploration and conquest of much of the Americas. El Dorado was the name of an Indian who ruled a town near Bogota, Colombia. According to legend, El Dorado celebrated festivals by plastering his body with gold dust, and plunging himself into Lake Guatavita at the end of the festival to wash off the gold, and make the gold a gift to the gods. His subjects also threw gold and other valuables into the lake. The legend of El Dorado grew, and the Spanish, Portuguese, and German explorers went in search of the golden Eldorado, a city in a land fabulously rich in gold. El Dorado himself was never found, but Eldorado came to mean a land of gold populated by several cities rich in gold. The English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh went in search of one of these cities. Because gold was always in demand as a religious donation or sacrifice, it had an unlimited demand and was always valued. It was an excellent store of value because it did not tarnish or corrode, and it was divisible into units of any size, making it useful for exchanges of varying magnitudes, and making change. The high value of gold per unit of weight made gold more transportable than other commodities that might serve as money. For these reasons, gold became the basis for the most famous commodity standard in history, the gold standard, a monetary standard that dominated the world monetary system from the 1880s until 1914.
|
legal disclaimer
1) Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article as well for any and all copyright infringements by authors and writers. E-articles is a free information resource. If you suspect this article for any copyright infringements, please read the Terms of service and contact us to investigate the problem.
2) The E-articles directory team is not responsible for inaccuracies, falsehoods, or any other types of misinformation this tutorial may contain and will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by a user through the user's reliance on the information gained here. Please read the Terms of service
Useful tools and features
If you like this article (tutorial), please link to it from your web page using the information above. Linking to this page, this is the only way to help us improve our service, the same time providing your visitors with a way to improve their online experience.
related articles
The Great Debasement (1542–1551) refers to the English Crown’s policy of coinage debasement during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. Coinage debasement occurred when governments replaced to a significant degree the gold or silver content of coinage with a base metal such as copper. By reducing the value of gold or silver content relative to face value, governments extracted usable revenue from domestic money stocks. This stratagem was called debasement because each coin was worth less in terms of its precious me...
2. The Medici Bank
The Medici Bank, perhaps the most famous bank of Renaissance Italy, rose to the top rank of European financial institutions during the fifteenth century. It accepted time deposits, the sum of which was several times larger than the invested capital, and was a lending institution. This was unlike some of the exchange banks of the time that were primarily involved in fund transfers associated with international trade. The Medici Bank was the chief bank for the Curia, and it had branches in the major cities of Italy, as well as Lo...
3. History of the Decimal System
The decimal system, a number system based upon the number 10, became a distinguishing characteristic of currency systems during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The currency system of the United States offers a typical example of a decimal currency system, with one dime equal to one-tenth of a dollar, and one cent equal to one-tenth of a dime, or one-one-hundredth of a dollar. From the ninth century until the end of the eighteenth century the Carolingian currency system held sway in Europe. Under the eighth-century...
4. The Carolingian Reform
Around a.d. 755 the Carolingian Reform established the European monetary system, which can be expressed as: 1 pound = 20 shillings = 240 pennies Originally the pound was a weight of silver rather than a coin, and from a pound of pure silver 240 pennies were struck. The Carolingian Reform restored the silver content of a penny that was already in circulation and was the direct descendant of the Roman denarius. The shilling was a reference to the solidi, the money of a...
With the establishment of the first English colonies in America, accounting or bookkeeping, as the discipline was referred to then, quickly assumed an important role in the development of American commerce. Two hundred years, however, would pass before accounting would separate from bookkeeping, and nearly three hundred years would pass before the profession of accounting, as it is now practiced, would emerge. For individuals and businesses, accounting records in Colonial America often were very eleme...
6. Discussion about The Federal Reserve System
The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system for the United States, established by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Most countries have only one central bank, such as the Bank of England, or Germany’s Bundesbank. The Federal Reserve System makes up a system of 12 regional central banks. Central banks are bankers’ banks, holding deposits of commercial banks, making loans to commercial banks, and serving as lenders of last resort to commercial banks in an economic downturn. The Federal Reserve System also ac...
7. Suffolk System
The Suffolk System was the first effort to regulate private banking in the United States. Although banking regulation later became a government activity, the Suffolk System was born of a private initiative that saw a need to regulate country banks. The Suffolk Bank of Boston first established the Suffolk System in 1819 and in 1824 six other Boston banks joined the system. The Suffolk System required country banks around Boston to deposit reserve balances totaling $5,000 in one or more of the seven Boston banks participati...
8. What represent the Treasury Notes
Treasury notes were interest-bearing treasury bonds that circulated as money in the pre–Civil War era in the United States. The notes were not legal tender but were accepted for payments owed the federal government, including tax obligations. For the first two decades of its existence the new government of the United States steered clear of the issuance of government notes that circulated as money. The hyperinflation of the American Revolution remained a thought-provoking memory of the dangers of paper money, and Al...
9. Augustan Monetary System
Augustus, Roman emperor from 30 b.c. to a.d. 14—the first emperor after the fall of the Roman Republic, established a monetary system that provided a degree of monetary order to the Romans for two centuries. The system gradually gave ground to currency debasement and inflation, which grew to unbearable proportions during the third century a.d., when the emperors Aurelian, Diocletian, and Constantine instituted major reforms of the Roman currency. The early Roman Republic adopted a bronze monetary standard, but wars ...
10. Gold Standard
Under a gold standard, the value of a unit of currency, such as a dollar, is defined in terms of a fixed weight of gold and bank notes or other paper money are convertible into gold accordingly. Although the monetary systems of individual countries have been based on the gold standard at times, all the economically advanced countries of the world were on the gold standard for a relatively brief time—roughly from 1870 to 1914, sometimes called the period of the classic gold standard. The coinage of gold dates back to 7...