I have always found this fixation on gold to be peculiar.
What is it about gold, that causes humanity to seek it, hoard it, and value it?
As a metal, it’s not particularly useful, but for it’s resistance to oxidation. It’s tensile strength, is poor, it’s shear strength is poor, and as an alloying material there are few positive underlying properties. It’s electrical conductivity is lower than other metals.
Certainly can’t eat it, derive energy from it, or most anything else.
“What is it about gold, that causes humanity to seek it, hoard it, and value it?”
It’s pretty...and it’s ductile, so it’s easy to form into what shape you like, such as idols.
In the beginning; In a pre-technological world native gold was ductile and malleable without refining so would be one of the first metals used, the starting point of its value. (Fashioning objects from metal stand at the beginnings of Technolgy!) Gold reflects light so stands out from other rocks; it is a sun like color so would be attractive to early man. That usefulness and scarcity lead to it being a medium of exchange between different cultures. That continuum of golds value persists, although not to the same level as previous ages.
Note that gold is not just attractive to pre-technolgical man.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/74412/why-does-nasa-use-gold-foil-on-equipment-and-gold-coated-visors
"To control the surface temperature of an object that is exposed to IR (heat waves), NASA wraps its equipment with a metallic reflector that reflects IR to keep it from getting “hot.” The common reflectors are aluminum, silver, copper, and gold. Below, the plot of reflectance vs. wavelength shows that all four metals are good IR-reflectors since the reflectance is close to 100% for wavelengths greater than 700 nm (λ ≥ 700 nm).
So why use gold? It’s most likely the same reason why they use gold extensively in circuit boards. (i) Gold does not corrode or rust while silver and copper do, which would reduce reflectance (by the way this happens before takeoff) and (ii) it’s a lot easier to work with gold than aluminum."
Finally, Women find it pretty, so men find it to find pretty women! :)