GoldInvesting

Gold is a very popular precious metal. It has been used for centuries as a medium for money, trade, jewelry, and a store of value. Gold gained it's popularity from it's easy application. It is easy to work with and forms alloys with many other metals. It is also a popular metal for conductive mediums because it is a very good conductor of heat and electricity. It is also not affected by heat, moisture, oxygen, and most corrosive agents, making it a very long lived metal.

For nearly as long as there have been humans, Gold has been highly valued. Beginning in the prehistoric times and extending into today's tradition of gold jewelry, Gold has been used in masks and ornamentation for rituals. Egypt was one of the earliest Gold rich areas.

The mining and refining of Gold was helped along by the Romans who developed new hydraulic methods of extracting the Gold from it's Ore. They used these methods in mines all across the Roman Empire, including the mines at Las Medulas in Galicia, where they had numerous aqueducts to bring in water for sluicing the metal.
Gold was one of the major deciding factors in the European decision to explore the Americas. It was widely held that the natives of the Americas had many gold ornaments and masks.

Gold became the metal of choice for many currencies and became the basis for what is called the Gold Standard. The Gold Standard is a standard whereby currencies are valued using a scale of their backing in Gold. Eventually, the Gold Standard was ousted, but the world's love of the metal continues. Many people around the world invest in the metal as a way to give their portfolios some stability and as a way to avoid the pitfalls of investing in currencies.