Timeline of gold

This is a timeline of gold.

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Time period	Development summary	More details

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Year	Event type	Details
40,000 BCE	Background	Small amounts of natural gold are found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, representing the earliest known presence of gold in a human context.	Spain
4,600 BCE	Background	Gold artifacts from the Varna Necropolis near Lake Varna on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria represent the oldest known well-dated gold artifacts in the world, indicating that gold craftsmanship emerges in southeastern Europe during the fifth millennium BCE.	Bulgaria
3,500 BCE	Background	Gold artifacts begin appearing in ancient Egypt at the end of the pre-dynastic period and in Lower Mesopotamia during the early fourth millennium BCE, with smelting techniques developed during this period marking a major advance in gold metallurgy.	Egypt
3,000 BCE	Background	The Wadi Qana cave cemetery in the West Bank yields gold artifacts dating to the fourth millennium BCE, representing the earliest known gold objects found in the Levant region.	Levant
1,900 BCE	Background	The first written reference to gold is recorded in ancient Egypt during the Twelfth Dynasty around 1900 BCE, while Egyptian hieroglyphs describing gold date back to at least 2600 BCE, with King Tushratta of the Mitanni describing gold as more plentiful than dirt in Egypt.	Egypt
1870 BCE	Background	In ancient Babylonia, the Code of Hammurabi records the use of precious metals registered by weight as a medium of exchange, providing some of the oldest surviving written evidence of commodity money practices.	Babylonia
950 BCE	Background	The Phoenicia become among the first peoples to use gold as a standardized currency, employing it to develop trade networks across the Mediterranean Basin, marking an early step in gold's transition from a decorative and religious material to a medium of commercial exchange.	Phoenicia
705 BCE	Background	Sennacherib, king of Assyria, describes preparing clay molds and pouring molten bronze into them to produce half-shekel coins, providing one of the earliest recorded accounts of a coin-casting process and evidence of standardized metal money production in the ancient Near East.	Assyria
610 BCE	Background	Gold from the southeastern corner of the Black Sea, exploited since the time of Midas, plays a central role in the establishment of what is probably the world's earliest coinage in Lydia, with the legend of the Golden Fleece possibly referencing the ancient practice of using fleeces to trap gold dust from placer deposits.	Lydia
600 BCE	Monetary policy	Alyattes of Lydia of Lydia establishes a fixed value for gold measured in wheat, representing one of the earliest known attempts to anchor the value of gold to a commodity standard, a practice his son Croesus extends by also fixing the value of silver relative to gold, producing a formal bimetallic ratio of one gold coin to ten silver coins.	Lydia
561 BCE	Background	Croesus, king of Lydia, initiates the minting of gold and silver coins that circulate widely across Asia Minor, making Lydia the first civilization known to adopt both gold and silver as struck coinage according to Herodotus.	Lydia
500 BCE	Background	The daric, a gold coin struck during the reign of Darius the Great of Persia, becomes one of the oldest and most famous struck gold coins in history. Made of nearly pure gold and roughly equal in weight to a U.S. five-dollar piece, it bears the image of an archer and serves as a benchmark for ancient gold coinage.	Persia
323 BCE	Background	Following the death of Alexander the Great, the double emission of gold and silver coinage that had operated continuously through his reign comes to an end, marking a turning point in the monetary history of the ancient Greek world.	Greece
300 BCE	Background	In ancient Rome, the bronze as (Roman coin), a unit of commodity money equal to one Roman pound of bronze, begins to be struck and circulates according to its metallic value, marking the beginning of Rome's standardized coinage system that will later give way to gold and silver dominance.	Rome
280 BCE	Background	During the Pyrrhic War, Rome molds its first silver coins — didrachms and their subdivisions — partly using large provisions of silver found in southern Italy after defeating Pyrrhus of Epirus, marking Rome's transition from bronze to silver as its primary monetary metal.	Rome
268 BCE	Background	Silver coinage begins to be officially struck in Rome itself around 268 BCE, with the denarius — meaning "containing ten" — becoming the standard Roman silver coin equivalent to a didrachm and divided into ten as (Roman coin), laying the monetary foundation upon which Rome's later gold coinage will be built.	Rome
245 BCE	Background	Bronze coinage predominates as the primary monetary medium in Rome from its introduction until around 245 BCE, after which it begins sharing circulation with silver coin, reflecting a gradual shift in Rome's monetary hierarchy toward more precious metals.	Rome
218 BCE	Monetary policy	Under the financial strain of the Second Punic War, Rome strikes gold coinage for the first time, using metal from the public treasury. The coins are based on the scripulum, equal to one twenty-fourth of the old Roman ounce or approximately 17½ grains, with denominations of one, two, and three scruples corresponding roughly to one, two, and three pre-1933 U.S. dollars. Officially valued at 20 sestertius per scruple of gold, the high ratio to silver leads some scholars to regard these pieces as symbolic rather than full monetary coins; the emission disappears shortly after.	Rome
217 BCE	Background	From 217 BCE onward, silver increasingly dominates Roman monetary circulation while bronze takes on an ever more subsidiary role, setting the stage for gold's eventual rise as the preeminent standard in the Roman monetary system.	Rome
217 BCE	Background	In Rome, the as (Roman coin) is reduced to the measure of one ounce and revalued at 16 to the denarius instead of 10, while the denarius itself is simultaneously devalued, marking the beginning of a long Roman pattern of currency debasement under fiscal pressure.	Rome
206 BCE	Background	During the Second Punic War, gold pieces are struck in ancient Rome, representing an early instance of Roman gold coinage driven by wartime monetary demand.	Rome
200 BCE	Background	Contemporaneously with the circulation of bronze and silver coinage in Rome and other Italian cities, gold circulates by weight in the form of nuggets and foreign coins during the early Republic, representing a primitive parallel gold economy operating alongside the official coinage system.	Rome
150 BCE	Coinage	The Britons strike their first gold coins, modeled on those circulating in Gaul, which were themselves copies of coins of Philip II of Macedon, marking the introduction of gold coinage to the British Isles as part of a broader diffusion of Mediterranean monetary practices northward.	Britain
50 BCE	Background	When Julius Caesar invades Roman Britain around the middle of the first century BCE, he finds gold coins already circulating among the Britons alongside bronze pieces, noting that they use both interchangeably and that iron bars of a certain weight also serve as currency.	Britain
25	Coinage	Cunobelinus (the Cymbeline of Shakespeare), king of the Britons, strikes gold coins in the first half of the first century CE, representing some of the earliest identifiable native British gold coinage produced under a named ruler.	Britain
25 BCE	Background	Rome introduces hydraulic mining methods for large-scale gold extraction in Hispania, with major operations at Las Medulas in León (province) using seven long aqueducts to sluice alluvial gold deposits, representing one of the most advanced gold mining operations in the ancient world.	Hispania
43	Monetary policy	Following the Roman conquest of Britain, an imperial edict requires that all money circulating on the island bear the image and legend of the Roman emperor, effectively replacing native British coinage with Roman currency and extending Roman monetary authority across the island until the Roman withdrawal in the fifth century.	Britain
50	Monetary policy	Gold coins circulating in ancient Britain undergo gradual debasement, with their weight declining from 120 to 84 grains over time, providing some of the earliest documented evidence of gold coin devaluation in British monetary history.	Britain
312	Monetary policy	Diocletian orders two reductions in the weight of the aureus, continuing a long pattern of debasement that has kept the Roman Empire's monetary situation in confusion since the reign of Nero.	Rome
312	Monetary policy	Constantine the Great carries out a monetary reform reducing the gold content of the aureus to approximately 70 grains, a devaluation of roughly 38 percent from its weight in the days of Nero, reflecting the chronic fiscal pressures of the late Roman Empire.	Rome
476	Background	With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, gold's relative importance as the preeminent imperial coin continues to grow, as the aureus had served as the empire's gold coin par excellence even while silver and its fractions maintained a high place in everyday commerce.	Western Roman Empire
800	Monetary policy	During the Carolingian period, a temporary emission of gold coinage takes place in western Europe, an exception to the general rule that early medieval minting is limited to silver and copper, reflecting the scarcity of gold and the disruption of Mediterranean trade networks following the fall of Rome.	Western Europe
800	Background	According to the Beowulf epic, Anglo-Saxons of the ninth century use gold and silver rings as a medium of exchange and as a vague measure of value, reflecting a reversion to primitive commodity money in Britain following the collapse of Roman monetary infrastructure.	England
900	Monetary policy	After the ninth century, no gold is coined in England or the other island countries for several centuries, while Byzantine Empire gold bezants and gold coins struck by Arab princes of Sicily during the ninth and tenth centuries circulate in European mercantile transactions but lack legal tender status in England, passing instead as bullion.	England
1066	Background	When William I of England comes to power, silver coinage is the principal monetary medium in England and continues as such until the beginning of the eighteenth century, with the monetary pound originally weighing one pound of sterling silver divided into twenty shillings each of twelve silver pennies.	England
1252	Coinage	In response to growing demand for higher-value coins needed in the foreign trade of the great Italian cities, Florence strikes gold coins of 48 grains of fine gold content, giving rise to the famous Florin. Similar coins are later struck in Germany, France, and other Italian cities, making the florin one of the most influential gold coin designs of the medieval period.	Florence
1252	Coinage	Louis IX of France strikes the first series of French gold coins, probably as result of leading the Sixth Crusade five years earlier, as part of a broader simultaneous reintroduction of gold coinage across western Europe that also includes the famous Florin struck in the same year and gold coins emitted by the Republic of Florence in Genoa.	France
1257	Coinage	Henry III of England orders the striking of the first English gold coin, a gold penny of pure gold weighing 45 grains, equivalent to a Norman penny bearing a star on one of its faces. The reintroduction of gold coinage in England after an eight-century eclipse is linked to the influence of the Crusades, growing trade contacts with Byzantium and gold-producing countries in the East, and the need for a more convenient medium for large mercantile payments than silver.	England
1257	Monetary policy	With the introduction of Henry III's gold penny, England establishes the practice of fixing the value of gold coin relative to the silver coins then in general circulation, making both legal tender at the officially established ratio, with the new gold penny set at 20 silver sterlings, producing a ratio of 10 to 1 between silver and gold. The coin is called a penny because that word is at the time the general term for money in England, equivalent to the French *denier*.	England
1,324	Background	Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire, passes through Cairo during his hajj to Mecca accompanied by a camel train of thousands of people and nearly a hundred camels, distributing so much gold that he depresses the price of gold in Egypt for over a decade, causing prolonged inflation across the region.	Mali Empire
1343	Coinage	Following consultations with jewelers, merchants, moneyers, and exchange dealers, England introduces a gold florin modeled on the Flemish florin and equivalent to the *petit florin* of Florence, weighing 108 grains at 23 carat 3½ grains fineness, valued at 6 shillings or 1½ solids. The agreement authorizes three denominations: the florin, the half-florin, and the quarter-florin, intended to circulate as the common gold coin of both England and Flanders.	England
1344	Monetary policy	England's second attempt at gold coinage fails when it becomes apparent that gold pieces are being valued at the official rate of 1 to 12.61 against silver — a ratio copied from France — which undervalues gold relative to silver, causing gold coins to be withdrawn from circulation. A proclamation of July 1344 declares that gold pieces will henceforth only be accepted with the free consent of both parties, and a subsequent proclamation limits their acceptance to their simple metallic value.	England
1453	Background	The Byzantine Empire falls, ending the continuous circulation of Constantine the Great's gold aureus, from which many medieval and modern European gold coins descend, marking the close of a monetary tradition stretching back over a thousand years.	Byzantine Empire
1492	Background	Following the European discovery of the Americas, Hernán Cortés leads a Spanish expedition that conquers an immense territory stretching from the southern United States through Mexico to Central America within two years, defeating the Aztecs and plundering their accumulated gold treasure, enriching Spain, Portugal, France, and England through the exploitation of mines formerly worked by indigenous peoples and fundamentally altering the global gold supply.	Americas
1848	Background	Gold is discovered by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill on the American River near Coloma, California, California, triggering the California Gold Rush and drawing 40,000 miners to the region within a year, with a further 6,000 covered wagons making the overland journey at the cost of approximately 5,000 lives, fundamentally reshaping the monetary gold supply of the United States.	United States
1852	Background	The discovery of gold by Edward Hargraves, an Australian prospector who had previously participated in the California Gold Rush and noticed geological similarities between California and his homeland, draws 357,000 people to Australia in 1852 alone, doing much to accelerate the settlement of the continent.	Australia
1866	Background	Prospector George Harrison discovers gold on a farm near what is today Johannesburg, receiving $30 from the landowner in compensation, a discovery that eventually makes South Africa the world's largest gold producer, responsible for more than half of global gold output.	South Africa
1872	Background	The largest gold nugget ever discovered up to that time is found in Australia, weighing 160 pounds, emblematic of the extraordinary richness of Australian gold deposits that make the country one of the world's leading gold producers.	Australia
1896	Background	A gold strike on the Klondike River, a tributary of the Yukon River, triggers the Klondike Gold Rush, with 100,000 prospectors setting out for the newly founded town of Dawson City, of whom only 30,000 to 40,000 arrive, as the North-West Mounted Police turn back at gunpoint all those without at least a year's supply of food.	Canada

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The initial version of the timeline was written by Sebastian Sanchez.

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