Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Gold has been a valuable and highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since long before the beginning of recorded history. A total of 165,000 tonnes of gold have been mined in human history, as of 2009. This is roughly equivalent to 5.3 billion troy ounces or, in terms of volume, about 8500 m3, or a cube 20.4 m on a side. The world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry. It has been claimed that most of the Earth’s gold lies at its core, the metal’s high density having made it sink there in the planet’s youth. Virtually all of the gold that mankind has discovered is considered to have been deposited later by meteorites which contained the element. Learn more about gold, its properties and applications throughout history in the following pages.
