Perhaps the most constant theme that has characterised the progression of human society from the dawn of civilization, more than 700 years ago, to the present day is man’s obsession with gold.

To a certain degree, gold’s peculiar power over the imagination of man is not so surpris-ing, given that it is the most beautiful of all metals, with a colour and a lustre that never decays.




On the other hand, this obsession is a peculiar trait, considering that gold has no inherent value, unlike other natural com-modities, and does not have the capacity to meet the basic needs of humans – gold cannot clothe people, like wool and cotton; cannot arm them, like iron; cannot keep them warm, like coal; and cannot feed them, like maize.

Yet it is prized above all commodities with inherent and life-sustaining value. This is because, through the ages, gold has become the symbol of ultimate wealth and can, therefore, be traded for any product one’s heart desires.




The ancient Egyptians were the first great civilisation to associate gold with power and wealth, and the great Pharaohs became obsessed with collecting and being buried with great hordes of golden loot.

It was, in fact, the ancient Greeks who took man’s obsession with gold a step further by using the precious metal as an extensive and standard form of money.

Credit for the introduction of the first standard gold coinage must be given to Croseus, King of Lydia between 560 and 547 BCE. The Kingdom of Lydia was an Iron Age settlement situated in Asia Minor.

Croseus, whose name became synonymous with wealth in the Greek and Persian cultures, was the first ruler of an ancient civilisation to issue the first true gold coins with a standardised purity for general circulation.

These coins were quite crude, and were made of electrum, a naturally occurring pale yellow alloy of gold and silver. Interestingly, the composition of these first coins was similar to alluvial deposits found in the silt of the Pactolus river, which ran through the Lydian capital, Sardis.

Since that time, for Greeks, Romans and Europeans, gold had an intrinsic value conferred on it which nothing could take away.

Because gold began to be widely used as money from the middle of the fifth century BCE, the discovery and exploitation of the metal became increasingly important.

The ancient Greeks mined for gold through- out the Mediterranean and Middle East regions and, by 325 BCE, had exploited gold from the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) all the way eastward to Egypt and Asia Minor. Some of the mines were owned by the State, while others were worked privately, with a royalty paid to the State.

There is ample archaeological evidence of the mining activities of the ancient Greek civilisation. It would appear that the gold was first mined from eluvial and alluvial placers only later, as these placers approached exhaustion, were the oxidised zones of gold quartz and sulphide deposits exploited, first by opencut methods and then by underground workings.

The Greeks had some interesting theories about the origin of gold, which can be evi- denced in the writings of both Plato and Aristotle. In par-ticular, gold was associated with water – a logical deduction, given that most of it was found in streams – and it was sup-posed that gold was a particularly dense combination of water and sunlight.

Besides being credited with the introduction of gold coinage, the Greeks were also the first civilisation to extensively practise alchemy, the quest to turn base metals into gold.

The Romans, likewise, sought gold through- out their massive empire and furthered the quest for gold beyond the confines of the Mediterranean. In particular, they obtained gold – using slaves, convicts and prisoners of war – from placers and mines in Spain, France, Britain, Germany, Central Europe and the Middle East.

It is estimated that the yearly production of gold in the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Christian era was in the region of some 250 000 oz/y.

The Romans not only furthered the quest for gold, but also advanced the science of gold mining to new levels of sophistication.

They diverted streams of water to mine hydraulically and built sluices and the first ‘long toms’. They also mined underground and introduced water wheels and the ‘roasting’ of gold-bearing ores to separate the gold from rock. They were able to exploit old mine sites more efficiently.

However, gold mining during the pre-Hel-lenistic and Hellenistic periods is not confined to the territories under the administration of the Greek and the Romans. There is evidence of ancient gold working and placers ranging from Japan to China, India, Russia, Turkey, the Mediterranean islands and lands, Central Europe, Spain, France, Britain, Mexico, Central America and South America.