by Drew Martin
What were the first human interactions with and reactions to gold that set us down the path were we worshiped it as a standard of beauty and a symbol of wealth and power? Did a landscape of pushed-up, lackluster rocks reveal a vein of gold that resembled a lightning streak? Did it bleed out of stones around the first fires like shiny blood? Did it represent eternity as it lay untarnished among rotting wood and decaying animals? Did its brightness in the sun, make people think it was from the sun itself?
A surprising fact is that gold did come from stars and not, like diamonds, from any process on Earth. But the Earth did concentrate gold dust.
Most of the matter in the universe was created during the Big Bang, but gold and other precious metals were not. The prevailing theory is that gold is produced by the collision of neutron stars, and a lot of it...enough to generate a mass about ten times the size of our moon, per event.
So maybe there is something out of this world about gold that we respond to in a profound way that has driven humans to hysteria, fueling hundreds of years of colonial slavery and looting. During Spain's grip on the Americas, about three million ships carrying gold back to Europe sank to the bottom of the ocean - an estimated $771 trillion of gold buried at sea.
A couple years ago I visited the Museo Oro del Peru. The range of uses and beauty of the gold on display is staggering but is only a hint of the treasures once cherished by the Incan people and envied by Europeans.
The following are some pictures I took with my phone during my visit:
