Before 3000 BC, gold was first recognized by human beings in the ancient country of Egypt. Since then, it has been closely intertwined with human development. With its dazzling luster, gold has become the first choice for decoration.
With the development of human beings, human beings have gradually left the era of self-sufficiency and entered the era of commodity economy. When human beings need money as a medium of transaction to make trading easier, gold naturally becomes the best choice. Seven hundred years ago, some coins made of gold and silver alloy, known as amber gold, appeared in Asia Minor. With the progress of the times, the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor was first forged in 600 BC. Later, in about 50 BC, the Roman Empire in Western Europe issued a gold coin of Anreus, on which the portrait of Caesar was also engraved. When the Roman Empire was declining, that is, in 400 AD, when the Romans gave up the rule of Great Britain, the three British islands, they also conveniently took away all the gold coins on the island, resulting in the shortage of people's currencies and the sharp drop in commodity prices, causing economic chaos.
In 1066 AD, the Norman people conquered the three British islands. In addition to having political power, they also carried out some reforms to the British monetary system. For example, it has created monetary unit systems such as pounds, shillings and pence, and has also established a metal based monetary system. At that time, one pound could be exchanged for one pound of sterling silver. This silver standard system was replaced by the duplicate position system in 1377. Under the duplicate position system, besides silver, the backing of currency also uses gold as the currency standard. After the duplicate position system was used for several years, the British royal family decided to use the gold standard system again. In 1717, the Bank of England officially named the gold price of ounces as 3 pounds, 17 shillings and 10.5 pence. After the implementation of the gold standard system, Britain's price index has obviously maintained a low range of fluctuations, and the function of the gold standard system to stabilize prices and the economy has also been proved.
Since Britain adopted the gold standard, countries in the United States and Europe have been competing to follow suit. In 1792, the United States adopted the duplicate system, which stipulated that $19.3 could be exchanged for an ounce of gold, but this did not trigger any gold boom. One day in 1848, when a young carpenter named John Marshall was building a sawmill in today's California, he inadvertently found gold foil, which triggered the gold rush in the west. This also made the once desolate west develop rapidly.
Before the 19th century, the level of gold productivity in human society was very low. Some people believed that: in the history of thousands of years before the 19th century, human beings produced less than 10000 tons of gold, such as only 200 tons of gold in the 100 years of the 18th century.
Since the discovery of a series of gold resources in the 19th century, the gold output has been greatly improved, especially in the 50 years in the second half of the 19th century, the gold output has exceeded the total amount of the previous 5000 years.
Today, the world's annual mineral gold is about 2600 tons.
