However, the lustrous and metallic qualities of gold, its relative scarcity and the difficulty of extraction have only increased the perception of gold as a valuable asset. So it turns out that the reason why gold is precious is precisely because it is so chemically uninteresting. If you put together all the earrings, all the golden rulers, the small traces of gold on each computer chip, each pre-Columbian statuette, each wedding ring and cast it, it is estimated that you would only have a 20-meter cube left or something like that. In the 16th century, the discovery of South America and its vast gold deposits caused a huge fall in the value of gold and, therefore, an enormous increase in the price of everything else.
So what exactly made gold so valuable and expensive, and why did several peoples show such interest in converting it into currencies? Surprisingly, it's not so much about the properties of gold, but about those that other elements don't have. Gold doesn't rust, tarnish and doesn't tarnish because gold doesn't react with almost anything.
