Discovery of gold

Gold is found in nature as bright, untarnishing nuggets and grains, which made it one of the first metals people noticed and worked. Prehistoric communities valued it for its colour and for the ease with which it could be hammered into ornaments, and some of the oldest known worked gold comes from the Varna necropolis in Bulgaria, dating to the fifth millennium BCE. In Egypt and Nubia, gold was mined on a large scale and linked with the sun and the gods, while the kingdom of Lydia struck some of the earliest coins from a natural gold and silver alloy in the seventh century BCE. Because it does not corrode, gold became a lasting store of wealth, and it still serves as jewelry, an electronic component and a reserve asset held by central banks.

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