Gold in The Ancient World
First Use of Gold
The first gold miners were probably the earliest Homo Sapiens. Gold nuggets were used as adornment and possibly had mythical significance. The gold from millions of years of alluvial deposition was waiting to be found. These early people could pick up a nugget, appreciate its beauty, with the color of the sun, and feel its weight. The sun was one of the mystical entities of these cultures, worshiped for its gifts of warmth and life. A golden nugget could offer the finder the color and warmth of the sun, and, by association, its powers.
Gold is found as dust, flakes, crystals and branching crystal formations that resemble the structure of ferns. Ancient peoples that found these fern-like crystals of gold held to a universal belief that gold grew as a plant in the rock. These early miners believed that gold deposits should be left with some gold still there to act as the seed that would allow the gold to replenish itself. This belief was held as late as the sixteenth century.
Mythology and the Golden Age
The first age of humanity, before the flood, was an age of innocence and happiness where truth and right prevailed. In Greek mythology, this was the Golden Age. The forests had not been robbed of trees and the stones of the earth had not been piled up to build fortifications. Men were free of seasonal famine. But men were not satisfied with the surface of the earth offered and began to dig into the bowels of the earth for metals. Iron, and more gold, were produced. Cadmus is a character in Greek mythology who is identified also as a real king of Phoenicia. He sowed the dragon’s teeth, which brought forth a crop of armed men. He also brought to Greece the alphabet from Phoenicia. From this learning supposedly sprang Greek civilization and with it the deterioration of the Golden Age of innocence.
Gold and the First Civilizations
Ancient Egyptian production was so extensive that it approached a monopoly for several thousand years.During the third millennium B.C., Egyptian merchants were exploring the east coast of Africa and the Arabian coasts. The lost city of Punt was a trading center that offered gold and rare spices to the Egyptians. It is believed to be in what is now Somalia. The Egyptians established a gold mining colony in Mashonaland, inland from the mouth of the Zambezi River. Five treasure ships left Punt for Kosseir to bring the gold, myrrh or other treasures to Queen Hatshepsut. The Twelfth Dynasty rulers (after 2000 B.C.) pushed the frontiers south into Nibia and beyond the Second Cataract of the Nile. The vast gold deposits around the area were agressively explored and exploited. The gold fields in the mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea, near the area of the First Cataract on the Nile were also exploited by the Egyptians. The ancient historian Diodorus Siculs wrote an extensive manuscript describing these mines which have survived to modern times.
Roman Gold Coinage
The growth of Rome began at a time when the world supply of gold was mounting to a very lagre volume and was widely disseminated. Like Greece, the Romans began their rise to power with very little gold in their natural resources.
The first Roman gold came from the river Po in the western Alps and from southern Piedmont. Rome was slow to acquire vast amounts of gold. The Second Punic War gave Rome the prize that changed its gold position. The acquisition of Spain brought stupendous amounts of gold to Rome. Gold came from the mines and alluvial deposits in the Aduar Basin, the Plains of Granada and the slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is still found in these places today. Rome also got, from the treasuries of Syracuse, 2700 pounds of gold.
Roman conquest brought gold to the Imperial treasury from the far reaches of the Empire. Gold was recycled to produce many of the gold coins issued during the time of the Roman Empire. Roman Imperial gold coins circulated far beyond the frontiers on a vast scale, making it the first world coinage. The coins most circulated were those of Augustus. The gold for these coins was mined, and the coins minted, on a large scale, at Lugdunum in Gaul and at Calagurris in northern Spain. There has been prolific gold mining at these sites since antiquity. Caesar provided another source of gold with the conquest of Britain. Strabo(the geographer) wrote that gold was one of the commodities exported to Rome after Caesar’s triumph in Britain. The Romans extracted gold from mines at Wales, Devon and also at Cornwall.
The price of mining gold took a leap when the Romans developed hydraulic mining in the Spanish mines. Rivers were re-channeled and destroyed. Strabo wrote that this method produced more gold than the deep mines. Some of the Roman mines in Spain were 650 feet deep. Slaves in the mines never saw the light of day. The mines were worked until they collapsed on their inhabitants.
Roman Egypt issued the first coinage in that ancient land. The first systematic mining and use of gold occurred in the Nile Valley, yet the Pharaohs did not issue a coinage apart from a very few and minor issues. After the death of Alexander the Great the Ptolemies became the ruling class in the land of the Pharaohs. They promptly issued a prolific coinage of heavy gold coins.
As the influence of Rome expanded to include most of the known world, their sources of gold and their hunger for it expanded as well. Gold was taken from the Rhine River, from mines at Vercellae and from Transylvania. It was brought in trade from the Atlantic coast of central Africa, and from the sources of the Egyptians. Gold from all over the world flowed into Rome. The wealth of gold reached a point where massive statues of pure gold were displayed. The wife of Emperor Claudius, Agrippina, in A.D. 49, wore a tunic of plaited gold thread. She poisoned her husband five years later so that her son, Nero, could become emperor. Then Nero had her murdered five years later.
All this gold was scattered over Europe and Asia when the barbarian invaders sacked Rome. This sacking ended the systematic accumulation of gold on a large scale in Europe until after the Dark Ages.
|
