A Casual History of Gold Pt. 4: Gold Rush

Hello, hello everyone. Hi, I’m glad you’re here. Welcome to Tea & Gemstones, your podcast home for anything and everything to do with jewelry, gemstones, and precious metals. We talk about royal jewels, the psychology of diamond shapes, analyze red carpet looks and dive into all things historical. To take you along on these sparkly auditory journeys is me, I am your host, Jen.

This episode you just started is the conclusion of a four-part series called “A Casual History of Gold.” We began the series with episode one, where we looked at the big, biiiiig picture as we addressed some fundamentals. Where does gold come from? I explain this seemingly simple question with a great deal of nuance and metaphors, haha but to summarize the answer, gold probably came from stars going boom! Or stars going smash! That’s an explanation my four-year-old would really adore and honestly maybe I should try to explain more of my complex science scenarios through a toddler filter. Once gold got to Earth, humans started finding it. And we loved it instantly. We’ve discussed how mankind across time, culture and location has always attributed a reverence and valuableness to gold; naming the yellow metal with words meaning, “skin of the gods” in Egypt, “blood and excrement of the gods” in South America. Gold has been used to craft the objects that mean the most to us; those items associated with religion, royalty and romance. Humans then started putting gold to work- can’t just sit in a temple as a pretty idol statute anymore- well… you can- but hey- gold- you’ve also got to go to work. Coins enter the world stages and economies are forever changed. Get it? Coins… changed? Okay, that joke was bad. And what is also a bit of a downer is that along with gold becoming the basis of wealth… powerful European nations follow their gold lust across the Atlantic. Episode two of the series examined the collision of Spain’s desire for colonizing and conquering upon the indigenous South American civilizations. There really could not have been more opposite viewpoints on golds and they clashed with tragic consequences. Gold is a powerful motivator for the exploration and development of the two American continents. And in the most recent episode, episode three, we talked about the exploration not of physical land, but of the scientific and philosophic possibilities that could be unlocked by the human mind. It is fascinating how different cultures all over the world; Asia, the middle east, Egypt, the Greco-Romans and Europe, all fairly independently endeavored to create gold… and I still marvel how this art of alchemy, which sought synthesized gold and artificial eternal life led to a plethora of true scientific achievements and the establishment of the modern profession of chemistry. Whew. So. For this fourth and final episode in the Casual History of Gold series, I wanted to look at gold’s involvement in history a bit closer to home… my home continent of North America, and my country, the United States of America. What part did gold play in helping the USA become a country stretching “for sea to shining sea”? What thanks do we owe to gold for the multi-cultural melting pot nature of our nation? And is gold the answer to any economic problem… or the cause? Plus… Americans just really love shiny jewelry… right? Let’s dive into part four of “A Casual History of Gold”: Red, white and gold.

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In terms of natural resources, the United States is a treasure trove. We’ve got vast amounts of coal, copper, lead, iron, natural gas, timber and uranium- lots of all the valuable and functional stuff a bustling world power with a population of nearly 330 million people needs. So where does gold fit in? With a resource like coal, it’s pretty straightforward to see how coal contributed to the development of America- literally fueling the Industrial Revolution and all that jazz. Gold has first been found in Virginia in 1782, but not much- and for some reasons people didn’t pay the discovery much attention. Fast forward a little bit to 1799. In North Carolina, a 12-year-old boy named Conrad Reed found a 17lb yellow “rock” in his family farm’s creek. Conrad brought his discovery to his dad, John Reed and Reed starts using it as a doorstop for his front door. Three years later farmer Reed showed his doorstop to a jeweler friend and his buddy was like, “hey… um- I think that’s gold.” And Reed is like, “so what?” And the jeweler offered to buy it and told Reed to name his price. Reed suggest $3.50, which was about a week’s worth of wages. The jeweler agreed, paid Reed and took the gold rock with him and he promptly resold it for $3,600. Reed decided he should do some more investigating of his farm’s gold potential, and he opened the United States’ first gold mine on his family land. Right after he opened the mine, one of Reed’s slaves found a 28lb gold nugget. Hopefully Reed got better business advice about a selling price than what he let his ‘doorstop’ go for. Local newspapers reported on the gold discovery and farmers all across the Carolinas started dedicating their off seasons from growing crops to mining their properties for gold. At first American gold mining was a really down-home operation, literally people digging in their backyards or panning their creeks in their spare time. But as word of the Carolina gold was spreading all over the world.

In southern England, a class of miners had honed their skills extracting copper and tin for decades… but those deposits were now running empty. When word of the American gold deposits reached those English miners, a lot of them left and immigrated to North Carolina. They brought their generations of mining expertise with them and gave the American gold mining community a super boost of knowledge and skill. And there was plenty of work… because just three years after Farmer Reed and his golden doorstop, gold was discovered in the neighboring state of Georgia. Unfortunately, it wasn’t on a farm this time, but instead on Cherokee land… which on brand for American history… was overrun and big air quotes here “claimed” by white settlers who swarmed in and established mines. So much Indian land was taken for gold mining the land grab is marked in history as the “Great Intrusion.” The Cherokees understandably were not happy about being pushed off their land for mining operations. The tensions over the gold mines in Georgia contributed to the overall anti-Indian sentiment in the government, and in 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830… aka the Trail of Tears. In episode two of this series we talked about the devastating consequences heaped upon south American indigenous peoples when foreign settlers come seeking gold, and sadly the Indian of the United States’ southeast were not an exception to the violent trend. The Indians tried to fight the Indian Removal Act in the supreme court, who actually sided with them at first… but then overturned the ruling the next year. The Native Americans were forced out and gone, and Georgia hosted a Gold Lottery and gave away the Cherokee land in 40-acre parcels to miners. And the miners sure got busy; they mined up so much gold that in 1835 President Jackson signed into existence new branch locations for the national mint to make coins from all this new gold; with locations including Charlotte, North Carolina and in Georgia. The rapid establishment of an experienced mining workforce meant that in 1849, these east coast miners were primed to lead the charge into sunny California.

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The American Dream is a concept at the center of the American identity. People journeyed across the Atlantic into the unknown to try and make a better life for themselves and their families. The “dream” was rooted in hard work, the hustle; if you work day in and day out, your wealth will increase bit by bit, year after year. But the discovery of gold in California morphed this concept of ‘the American dream’ forever… changing it from a long process of a lifetime dedication to hard work to the new dream of a burst of instant fabulous wealth. The mindset shifted to seeking out a lucky ‘big score’ which would set you up for life without the hard scrabble hustle of daily work. But how did people discover there was “gold in them there hills?”

How did that all kick off? In present day we call California The Golden State and their slogan is ‘Eureka!’ Meaning… I found something! And that something was gold! How was that gold first found?

Well, the land area we call California has been in the hands of a couple different nations. Spain claimed the area first, and in 1821 when Mexico won independence from Spain, Mexico got to be in charge. Mexico didn’t develop the land much beyond setting up some missions to quote “make civilized Christians” out of the indigenous peoples. We first have a record of gold out of California from March 9th, 1842, when a farmer slash rancher named Francisco Lopez was hiking to look for some runaway horses. He stopped at riverbed to dig up wild onions for a snack and found some gold nuggets. He sent the pieces off to the US Mint for authentication, but word of gold in the wilds of Mexican territory didn’t spread. Lopez set up a small local mine around the river, but he did it pretty quietly. No rush was triggered. Four years later in 1846, some Indians at one of the Mexican missions found some gold but the friars kept it a secret because they too wanted to avoid a gold rush- a whole bunch of settlers and prospectors frenzily descending on their land wasn’t what they wanted. But gold can’t stay hidden forever. And while the California Gold Rush is an enormous cultural and historical event that rapidly changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people- the phenomenon originated with some guys just trying to build a town in the wilderness.

The man who found the gold that really started the California gold rush was named James W. Marshal. He had been born in New Jersey in 1810. When he was 24, he left home to seek adventure in the west. Unfortunately, the adventure he got was malaria. He was living in Missouri and having a really hard time feeling healthy after getting sick. His doctor suggested Marshal move farther west to nicer weather. So, Marshal took a train to Oregon… decided he didn’t like Oregon and he finally ended up in a newly founded agricultural settlement in California called Sutter’s Fort. Marshal became friends with the founder of Sutter’s Fort, a man named John Sutter. Quick bio about John Sutter… he started life named “Johann” and was born in what’s now Germany. When Sutter was 21, he’d married a rich widow and spent so much of her money he was about to go to jail for debt. But he skipped his trial and took his wife and five children to America under his self-stylized new name of ‘Captain John Sutter.’ He wasn’t in the military… he was lying, he just liked having the title. He had some pretty colorful travel adventures all over North America, including living in the Kingdom of Hawaii for a while. Sutter ultimately ended up in Mexico, getting permission from the Mexican government to start a settlement in California he claimed would be an “agricultural utopia.” He got permission granted and set up “Sutter’s Fort.” Now Sutter… he is an atrocious human being who committed truly heinous human rights atrocities against the indigenous peoples who were already living on the land he was quote, “given” unquote. He treated them like slaves locked up on his property as laborers. He would give Indian children away to friends as gifts. Yeah- not a good guy. Well, Sutter had this land, and he was trying to build and develop it. When James Marshal arrived, Sutter hired him to build a water driven sawmill on the banks of a river. While the sawmill was under construction, Marshal went to inspect the water wheel and found a few nuggets of gold caught up in it. He took the nuggets to Sutter, and they actually went and got an encyclopedia to read about “gold” to see that’s what they really had found. Sutter expressed great concern that a gold rush would destroy his utopia in the making and he tried to keep the discovery quiet. But there was a man in Sutter’s Fort named Samuel Brannan who owned a store that sold supplies… and he also had a newspaper. Brannan wanted to make money… so he published the gold discovery in his newspaper. Apparently, Brannan took a jar of gold and walked up and down the streets of San Francisco yelling quote, “Gold! Gold from the American river!” That will get people’s attention, haha. Larger newspapers and east coast papers picked up the story and it. Was. On.

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At first it was local people in California and neighboring Oregon deserting their everyday lives to go look for gold. Samuel Brannan after he published his first paper about finding gold couldn’t publish another issue for a long time because all his workers quit and went mining! But he sold mining supplies out of his store at a massive mark-up to the influx of people; Brannan had purchased pans and spades for 20 cents each… and then sold them for $15 each. In nine weeks he made $36,000. On December 5th, 1848, President James K. Polk confirmed the massive gold discoveries in a speech to Congress. At this time the United States had won the Mexican-American war and California was a territory, not a state. But people from all over the United States and abroad were headed for the California mines. 1849 was the biggest year of immigration to California, hence the nickname “the forty-niners.” People poured in from Latin America, China, Australia, Turkey, New Zealand, France, Italy, Germany, Mexico even some African nations. 90,000 people came to California in 1849. In six years there were 300,000. For a point of reference, in 1847 San Francisco had only 500 people. Scores of boats arrived on the California coast, and they were just abandoned because not only did the passengers disembark, but the sailors and boat crew ditched the ship and went ashore too! California didn’t stay a territory for long, gold was a powerful motivator for obtaining statehood, which California was granted in September 1850. It wasn’t all good news… on a very local level… Sutter’s fears came true- his little Sutter’s Fort was totally overrun by huge crowds of people and squatters and his livestock was poached and buildings torn down. His fields of crops were emptied and trampled. Sutter actually tried to appeal to the United States government for compensation for what was done to Sutter’s Fort, but he never received any money. He was broke. But the fact that Sutter didn’t make it rich off the gold rush seems exactly like what he deserved for all the awful things he did to the Indians. James Marshal did not benefit from the gold rush either- his sawmill project was a failure and hordes of prospectors pushed him from his land. Marshal subsequently tried in turn to start a vineyard, and then his own gold mine, but nothing turned a profit. He died penniless.

On the micro scale of personal individual stories, the gold rush in California was brutal and harsh. The California goldfields were lawless places, with violence as the preferred method to settle disputes and claims. Once the easily accessible gold was panned from the rivers, the business of extracting gold from deeper in the earth was messy and difficult, fraught with hazards. Many of the forty-niners who mined never made enough money to have a “big score” and never work again. But the businessmen supplying the equipment for the dreamers… they made bank. One example is a Mr. Levi Strauss, who first started his denim empire by selling overalls to miners in San Francisco in 1853. But the huge influx of people immigrating into an area at warp speed brought with them equally tremendous development of towns, roads, infrastructure, railroads… And not just for California… A 2017 study by the Journal of Economic History states that the economic expansion of the California gold rush led to 15 years of steady, recession-free growth for all of America.

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Let’s look to the north… the wild untamed north of the Alaskan territory and the Yukon in Canada, just to the east of Alaska. In the area of the Yukon there is a region called the Klondike which is particularly wild. With no real roads, the only way into this land was to go up rivers in boats… and only in the summers when the temperatures were above freezing. The landscape was varied with mountains, valleys, dense forests and wide-open exposed tundra. The Native peoples shared the land with bears, moose and wolves. Needless to say, the climate was nowhere near as welcoming as sunny California. So how in this inhospitable landscape did gold come to be discovered? Who was poking around the Yukon? Well, let me introduce you to a man named Ed Schieffelin (she-fah-len). Ed Schieffelin was born in 1847 in Pennsylvania. He was a restless, curious man who history paints as being just compelled to seek out precious metals. There’s a quote directly from Schieffelin, “I never wanted to be rich, I just wanted to get close to the earth and see mother nature’s gold.” End quote.

Ed and his brother had discovered silver in the Arizona territory and founded the famous city of Tombstone, Arizona. He had also tried prospecting in California, but he was not successful there. Schieffelin loved maps and geology and he had a belief there was a “continental belt” of precious minerals that striped across and up the North American continent. After coming up empty in California, this belief led him to lead a prospecting expedition by the Yukon River in 1882. He found some gold nuggets and because of Schieffelin’s tremendous jackpot with silver in Arizona, his gold discovery got a lot of publicity. Hundreds of hopeful miners followed Schieffelin’s route up the river. Schieffelin, himself already extremely rich from his Arizona success, didn’t think the 50 degrees below zero temps of the Arctic were fun… it wasn’t worth freezing to death to him- he declared Alaska impossible to mine and he went home to his mansion in San Francisco. But to a lot of other people, gold was worth the risk.

After Schieffelin left the north in 1883- the north was fairly quiet. Prospectors continued to follow the rivers and stake claims. Several small boom towns would burst into life over a spring and summer only to vanish come winter. Now, in this time period of the late 1880s, communication and travel still isn’t that quick, especially somewhere far, and remote like the Yukon. In August 1896, a small group of prospectors went down a tributary of the Klondike River called Bonanza Creek… and they found absolutely massive amounts of gold. Every local-ish miner and prospector anywhere in the Yukon swarmed upon the newfound bounty… they came up the rivers on boats or across land via dog sled. But because this discovery happened over the north’s harsh fall and winter- word of the new gold found didn’t really leave the Yukon. But whoa-ho-ho, when the rivers and ports unfroze come spring… oh my my! ….the prospectors who had been mining the Bonanza Creek all winter started sailing into ports like San Francisco and Seattle with their bounties. The first ships from the Yukon miners docked on July 15th, 1897 in San Fran. There were two ships were named ‘Excelsior’ and ‘Portland.’ And get this- adjusted to today’s values, those two ships were carrying one billion dollars in gold. During the entire California gold rush estimates state about 2 billion dollars of gold were found. So… half of that total amount is on the first TWO SHIPS from the Yukon. When this news hit the newspapers and telegraphs, people went hysterical. On July 17th, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a front-page headline in all capital letters: “GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!” The news of chunks of gold just laying on the ground will excite people at any time- but particularly now Americans were primed for gold fever. By now the glow of the California gold rush had long since faded… the 15-year economic boom had not only slowed, the United States was in some financial trouble. In the 1890s there had been a series of financial recessions and bank failures leading to mass unemployment. And America was using the gold standard- meaning paper money was tied to how much gold the government physically had in hand…. And that wasn’t going well- people were hoarding gold because HELLO- the banks are failing! People aren’t comfortable with economic uncertainty. Having a large amount of physical gold in their possession seemed like an absolute dream come true to a LOT of people. In one year after those two ships came to harbor, 100,000 people tried to go mine the Yukon. To took California six years to amass 300,000 people from their gold rush. Getting to the Yukon was exceptionally difficult and dangerous, but the massive amount of people making the effort should indicate how powerful a motivator gold was to desperate people. ‘Gold fever” caused mass resignations of staff which shut down many businesses in the continental US, even whole cities! In Seattle, the city was thrown into disarray when the mayor, 12 policemen and most of the streetcar drivers abandoned their civic duties to go treasure hunting. The gold rush was a full cultural phenomenon. Branded clothing, equipment, food, etc were all branded as “Klondike”. We still do that nowadays- think of like The North Face or Patagonia… we all like to feel connected to the wildness.

Now technically the Klondike Gold Rush was happening in Canada, but the borders of southeast Alaska had been murky and disputed between the US, Britain and Canada ever since the US bought Alaska from Russia in 1867. But because of the remote area and the sheer numbers of American prospectors, the US kind of got to steamroll in unhindered. The Canadians were able to draw some lines in the sand in areas they could control, like the shipping ports- at which point the prospectors had to cooperate with things like paying custom duties… however steep the price.

The frenzy of the Klondike gold rush concluded almost as suddenly as it had burst into happening. The Spanish-American War began in 1898 which removed the gold rush updates from newspapers, cutting off a supply of newly interested miners finding out about Yukon. And funnily, the boom towns of the rush, like Dawson City and Skagway- once known for their wild lawless ways, were becoming more civilized and developed, even as their populations dropped and leveled off from boom height numbers. In August 1898, gold was found in Nome, Alaska and many prospectors left the Yukon to seek new fortunes.

The long-term consequences of the Klondike gold rush are mixed. Like in California, the economic boost brought new lines of communication and travel to places that would have otherwise stay much longer isolated and underdeveloped. But also as in the Golden State, the native Indigenous population suffered greatly, the Han people’s numbers fell catastrophically from environmental damage to their rivers and forests, their traditional fishing and hunting grounds destroyed. They actually had to appeal to the Canadian government for aid to prevent dying of famine in 1904… thanks to the gold rush.

Seattle really reaped the rewards of the gold rush- it is what truly established Seattle as a major city. The year before the rush, Seattle’s business receipts totaled $300,000. Spring of 1898? $25 million in just eight months. In 2016, Seattle was home to six Fortune 500 companies, including Amazon, Starbucks, Costco and Microsoft. Do we owe these massive global brands to the Yukon gold rush? The rush helped give Seattle the foundation to be the business powerhouse metropolis it now is. Maybe you can thank gold for your pumpkin spice latte and two-day prime shipping. The American economy as a whole experienced a boost, much like it did after the California gold rush. The bank crises of the 1890s were able to be put in the rear view. The Canadian economy experienced a ten-year gold super charged period of prosperity.

Aside from financial numbers… another benefit from the Klondike rush was establishing a relationship of cooperation between the US and Canada. The establishment of smooth transcontinental rail traffic, moving ships of cargo and passengers through ports- Canada and the US have a reputation for the longest peaceful border between nations and that good relationship really solidified at this time.

The northern gold rushes greatly contributed to the development of the state of Alaska. Alaska was officially incorporated as an organized territory in 1912, though it didn’t become the 49th US state until 1959. Alaska was literally a cash cow; with America’s economy on the gold standard, it was super awesome that Alaska was cranking out gold. But having the nation’s money tied to physical gold wasn’t a perfect situation; and the United States went off the gold standard in 1933 as part of trying to rebound from the Great Depression. But through the decades, Alaska has continued to sustain a high output of gold; in 2018, gold still accounted for 28% of all mining wealth from Alaska.

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America has always been a hungry nation. The United States perpetually wants to consume and spread and build… and gold is fuel for all those goals. Of course the country is going to want to expand and claim land if it has valuable resources. And what is more valuable than gold? Not much, haha With money comes power and the opportunity to grow and develop other facets of an economy beyond just mining; case in point, California has the largest economy of all fifty united states, and indeed if California was it’s own country it would have the fifth largest economy in the world. I submit that the greater gains from the gold rush come on the macro scale; what happened to California as a state and a culture, and in turn what that did for the United States. The California gold rush caused a rapid multi-cultural infusion into a small area. Gold created a super melting pot, setting California up to be an example of vibrant cultural fusion. Alaska saw it’s development as sort of a discovered piggy bank for America; the northern state funded and boosted the national economy on a grand scale. The gold boost from the north helped set America up to be in a good financial situation heading into the challenges of the early 1900s, like World War I.

Looking beyond just America’s direct history… Gold is connected to so much of our human experience. How we show love and commitment with rings and jewelry. To crown our royalty and our winners… we still give out gold medals to Olympic athletes. Gold has historically been at the center of religions; gold has been divinely personified in multiple cultures. Gold is a motivator; sending people across seas to unknown lands, expanding borders of nations, and explorers simply putting foot to ground to hunt lost treasures. Gold motivates not just physical seeking, but the lure of gold spurred mankind to experiment and wonder about the natural world- the side effect was not really synthetic precious metals- but the foundation of modern chemistry… with some notable scientific discoveries along the way. And with all these grand philosophical concepts, historical events and thousands of cultural artifacts… there really is nothing like the feeling of hanging your own gold chain around your neck, slipping on a beloved ring or pair of earrings. Gold is beautiful and we love it, always have, and always will. For that fact, a golden thread will stay woven tightly to human history.

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So that concludes the series “A Casual History of Gold.” It truly has been my pleasure to walk through these last four episodes with you. I mentioned in the introduction to the series back in episode eight that I wanted this series to feel like I came and sat down in your living room with a glass of wine to talk about gold… I suppose at this point we would have finished the bottle haha Please reference the show notes for a link to our website which has transcripts of all Tea & Gemstones episodes and the bibliography. Check out our Instagram to leave me some feedback on what you think of the series, or what you’d like for a future podcast episode. Our theme song is by Joseph McDade. I have been your host, Jennifer. Until next time, stay sparkly.

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World Gold Council. “Above-Ground Stocks.” World Gold Council, 1 Feb. 2021, www.gold.org/goldhub/data/above-ground-stocks.

Wujastyk D. An alchemical ghost: the Rasaratnâkara by Nâgârjuna. Ambix. 1984 Jul;31(2):70-83. doi: 10.1179/amb.1984.31.2.70. PMID: 11615977.

A Casual History of Gold Pt. 3: Alchemy

Hello, hello everyone. Come in, sit back, get comfy… Welcome to Tea & Gemstones, I am your host, Jen. This is your podcast home for talking about anything and everything to go with jewelry and gemstones. In past episodes we have talked about the science of colored diamonds, how a 15-million-dollar necklace contributed to the death of Queen Marie Antoinette and compared the jewelry fashions of the Met Gala & Emmy red carpets. Currently Tea & Gemstones is doing our first ever series, “A Casual History of Gold.” In the first two episodes of the series, we discussed how gold came into existence in the first place… it is so cool- to paraphrase it really simply haha, it has to do with smashing, crashing, melting, and exploding stars in space. And this yellow metal from born in galaxies above has an ancient divine reputation; we discussed how many cultures across the world, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Incas and the Aztecs all considered gold either from the gods, for the gods or even actually physical parts of their gods. Or some combo of all those qualities. But what happens when one culture who views gold as a financial commodity to claim and conquer collides with a culture who views gold as sacred? Haha, if everything I am rambling about is new information to you… you might have missed the first two episodes. I recommend backtracking down the episode list and catching up real quick. But I mean, you feel free to do whatever you want haha I understand wanting to listen to this episode right away because it is fascinating. So… humans have picked golden nuggets from riverbeds, stolen treasures from others, smashed open rocks and melted down ore to claim gold. But humans have always wondered if it was possible to obtain gold by a more… fantastical method. Let’s talk about… alchemy.

When you hear the word ‘alchemy’- what is your first mental image? Is it a medieval wizard in long robes, standing over a bubbling cauldron? A steam punk mad scientist in a lab surrounded by a tangle of tubes and hazy smoke? It turns out neither of those ideas are all the way wrong or right. Alchemy is an idealistic mash-up of science and natural philosophy. It is intriguing that so many different peoples and cultures across four millennia and three continents all independently developed their own practices of alchemy. The official definition says alchemy is, “the medieval forerunner of chemistry, based on the supposed transformation of matter.” So… can we turn this… into that? The most well-known hypothetical ‘this to that’ is- can we turn lead into gold?

Our knowledge of alchemy starts in the east and then moves west. We have records of alchemy first coming onto the scene in ancient China and on the Indian subcontinent. It then appears in the Greco-Roman Egypt sphere and the Islamic world before alchemy finally appears in medieval Europe.

Ancient China did not have an abundance of gold as an easy natural resource like Egypt or Peru. The great scarcity of gold may have spurred the practice of alchemy into creation. We want gold… we can’t find much around us… let’s try and make it! The Chinese thought minerals and metals had a life cycle, where they slowly morphed into other substances- so left alone in nature, lead would gradually become silver and then eventually, gold. Alchemists believed they could do this natural process of change faster and better in their laboratory through methods like roasting, straining and mixing. What they really ended up doing was founding the origins of modern chemistry. Though variations of alchemy existed in so many places- each culture had slightly different goals. Yes, they all wanted to create gold- but the ancient Chinese had an even higher goal than fattening wallets. The Chinese believed gold was their ticket… to immortality.

You can’t blame the ancient Chinese for thinking gold was everlasting. I mean, gold doesn’t tarnish or rust and it’s so rare in China. An alchemist named Ko-Hung who was born in 283 AD left a written account of his alchemy methods… and they are gnarly. This is no Betty Crocker kitchen how to… His top recipe for creating gold was to boil together cinnabar, arsenic, salt, chalk and oyster shells with a lot of mercury. Let’s break down this ingredient list. Some of these things… salt… chalk… oyster shells seem pretty benign, no harm in messing about with those. But um… okay, so cinnabar is a red mineral ore that China has in abundance, and cinnabar becomes mercury when you heat it up. Unfortunately, mercury vapors are super bad for you, to put it mildly. It’s sneaky deadly because it has no smell, but once you inhale it, it wreaks havoc on all your organs. Plus, mercury vapors can linger in the air for up to ONE year. And I’m sure we all know the word ‘arsenic’- we immediately know arsenic equals poison. The EPA states that all forms of arsenic are a serious risk to human health. But, get this- did you know arsenic occurs naturally out in the world as a metallic gray substance? So it’s definitely conceivable why the Chinese thought the shiny stuff that looked metal-ish could get them closer to gold.

This type of recipe ingredient list for all it’s deadliness, is pretty standard alchemic fare. No doubt experimenting in close quarters with such materials made for a hazardous workplace for a Chinese alchemist trying to create an elixir of life. Alas, for all the Chinese experimentation, it doesn’t seem like they were successful in finding the key to living forever. Contrary to their goal of an elixir of life, Chinese alchemists are most famous because they accidentally created a great bringer of death. In 850 AD during the Tang dynasty a group of unnamed alchemists wanted to experiment with a new ingredient they had recently created. They had taken bat guano- guano is a nicer sounding word for bat or bird poop- they took a bunch of the black sticky guano and soaked it in water for a couple days. The result was a white crystalline solid substance. Dually unbeknownst and unfortunately for the alchemists, their newly created ingredient was potassium nitrate, which is a byproduct of combining the bacteria in guano with moisture. So… They tried out a new recipe; 75 parts their new white crystals, 15 parts charcoal and 10 parts sulfur. When combined and held over an open flame, the mixture exploded with a huge flash and bang. We have a historical text that states, quote, “smoke and flames result, so that the alchemists hands and faces have been burnt and even the whole house where they were working burned down.” End quote. Well, sorry about all that, but congratulations! I know gold was the goal, but you just invented… gunpowder.

Let’s transition away from ancient China and their accidental pyrotechnics. So, the oldest Indian writings in existence these Hindu sacred scriptures called the Vedas. They date to around 3,000 years old and they contain references to a divine connection between gold and long life. But ancient Indian alchemy didn’t walk the same path as the Chinese in pursuing immortality, because the Indians believed their religion offered them eternity. We have Buddhist texts dating from the 2nd to 5th century AD containing discussion of changing lesser metals into gold. We’re not sure if the idea of creating gold was born from Indian alchemists organically or if the idea came from across borders, because India is so close to China and Alexander the Great had invaded India in 325 BCE. Truthfully, we don’t know much about Indian alchemy- but that isn’t really the alchemist’s fault. They wrote a lot down! But we just can’t read it. Historians have approximately 39 academically analyzed documents from ancient Indian alchemists. But a guy named Gerrit Jan Meulenbeld, a physician-scholar who was a leader in the history of Indian medicine- he made a statement in 2002 that are 655 unanalyzed alchemical documents. A potential flood of fascinating information. But all those documents, why can’t we read them? Well, they are all in Sanskrit, a language that in 2010, India- a country with over a billion people, in 2010 India recorded there are only about 14,000 Sanskrit speakers. .0014%. As of 2021, no Indian alchemical documents have been fully translated and less than half are classified as “critically analyzed.” So maybe the secret to turning lead into gold has been with us all along, on an ancient Indian recipe card we just can’t read.

We do have one very tangible achievement from the experimentations of the Indian alchemists- steel. This metal backbone that comprises most of our skyscrapers, airports, railways and bridges was first created in clay pots called ‘crucibles’ by enterprising alchemists who mixed up bits of iron and charcoal in the crucibles then roasted them in furnaces at extremely high temperatures. Alchemists are all about experimenting, taking every natural element from their environment, and asking the question, “what happens if…?” and then proceeding to boil, smash, combine, burn, soak every combination they can think of. The result from roasting iron and charcoal in the clay crucibles were the world’s first pure steel ingots, with even amounts of carbon distributed through the steel. This made the metal shatter resistant and tough, and able to be sharpened to a razor-sharp edge. Indian steel became famous through the ancient world. Remember in an earlier episode of this series, I talked about how when Alexander the Great conquered Persia he took all the gold in Persia as his war prize? Well, when Alexander conquered India in 327 BC, he claimed 2.7 tons of the alchemist’s best steel as his winnings. Some Indian alchemists traveled to Damascus in Syria and set up a famous sword making guild. This Damascus steel was so legendary for it’s high quality that it inspired the “Valyrian steel” in the book and tv series Game of Thrones. But like I mentioned earlier, steel is more than swords now, it has gone on to be crucial to so much of our modern world. In 2012 the World Steel Association stated the industrialized world went through 1.4 billion tons of steel. So, let’s add ‘the most ubiquitous building material’ to the list of technological discoveries inadvertently created so far in mankind’s quest to make gold.

I can only daydream about what creations we could unlock from the ancient Indian alchemists if we could only get those 655 Sanskrit documents translated and analyzed.

Let’s leave China and India and cross the Aegean Sea to Greece. When it comes to the ancient Greeks and alchemy… they had the approach of “work smarter, not harder” … it is a lot easier to jumpstart your work if you use the preestablished knowledge base. That’s a fancy way to say they were copy-cats. It is pretty accepted by historians that the Greek’s alchemy practices were heavily copycatted off of first century Egypt. And while the Greeks no doubt had a wealth of alchemical information flowing into their country during ancient times… unfortunately hardly anything was preserved for our modern-day study. Our knowledge of the ancient Egyptian alchemy practices is limited. And it’s limited because of one dude with some matches. A real jerk of a Roman emperor named Diocletian (dai-uh-klee-shn) put down an Egyptian revolt- they didn’t like being under Roman rule, go figure- and in retaliation for the Egyptian’s daring to put up a fight… Diocletian burned all their alchemical books. Diocletian claimed this was a safeguard to prevent Egypt from creating it’s own gold and silver and messing up the Roman economy. …what? Were the Egyptian alchemists so good at their job that a possible flood of created gold coins was about to tank the Greek market? It is so intriguing to me that even without tangible proof, it’s like there was this “better safe than sorry” approach to alchemy. Like, “hey- there’s no way this works… but you know what- just in case, burn everything.” It’s a loss for history though. I have a personal visceral response to burning documents. It wasn’t a complete erasure of Egyptian alchemical works- there are two famous papyrus documents that give us almost everything we know about Egyptian alchemy. They survived the Roman emperor’s burning party because they were safely buried in a tomb in Thebes, Egypt. They sat there a vvveeery long time, haha.

The papers were discovered in the early 19th century by an adventurer named Giovanni Anastasi. We’ve talked in early gold episodes about the type of person who follows the lure of unfound treasure… they’re usually a colorful personality. Anastasi stays true to that characterization. He was a wealthy merchant who got bored with his life, ditched everything, and went exploring. He then proceeded to sell his discoveries to a bunch of different European museums. The papers he found in the tomb were actually spilt up and they were subsequently named after their new homes: the Leyden papyrus lived with the Dutch and the Stockholm papyrus was with the Swedish. Even though these super rare documents came to light around 1830, they’re not translated and published until 83 years later in 1913. A professor in Sweden named Otto Lagercrantz, he had given himself a personal mission- to find and translate as many alchemical manuscripts as he could. He went all over Europe translating documents creating a new wave of available information about alchemy… but I guess too bad he didn’t speak Sanskirt, India’s documents didn’t get translated, obviously. But both Egypt papyri that Giovanni had found were written in ancient Greek, which Otto dutifully translated. The contents he revealed are amazing.

Together the Stockholm and Leyden papyri contain 265 recipes covering topics such as counterfeiting precious metals and gemstones, how to clean pearls, and how to make purple dye and copper ink. The recipes are not very elaborate in their ingredients and processes, just a few sparse details. Historians believe these papyri are a personal Clifnotes- remember those- of something grander and bigger. So, across the ancient world- there was apparently a sort of ‘master alchemical recipe book’ that lots of different alchemists in different places all had a copy of. Historians have found the same recipes repeated in different languages dating from the ninth century all the way to the twelfth. While no master copy of this ancient cookbook has been found, enough pieces have been discovered that overlap that we can reasonably conclude the master book existed. This collection of alchemical documents, to which the Stockholm and Leyden papyri belong- historians call the collection the “mappae clavicula.” The name ‘mappae calvicula’ is actually a funny mistake. It’s Latin and literally translates from Latin to mean “the little key to the small cloth”, which seems an odd nonsense title. And that’s because it is, that title is a mistake. Linguists now think when one of the ancient scribes was translating the original Greek they mis-translated the word “knack”, or “trick” for… “hand towel.” So the master recipe book should be titled something along the lines of “A little key to the tricks of the trade”, which seems more appropriate for a how-to book. I can imagine whoever translated the error first all those centuries ago thinking like, “eh- it’ll be fine. No one will notice.” And now their clerical error is immortalized.

So, who owned the Stockholm and Leyden papyri, these hand-copied bits of a mysterious master how-to alchemy book. Well, the papyri were found buried in Thebes, like I mentioned earlier, safe with their owner. The ancient Egyptians believed what you were buried with in death you got to physically bring with you into the eternal afterlife. So the papyri are personal- this guy’s own notes- he was already familiar with the alchemic practices but he needed to take his notes into the afterlife, just in case. We are talking about eternity after all. 265 fantastical recipes crammed onto about 20 sheets. If this is the amount of information we can glean from the tomb of a sort of average joe alchemist- his personal shorthand notecards, I cannot imagine how much has been lost from the burning of the official library. Perhaps a full master copy of the mappe calvicula.

Maybe because the Greeks and Romans had won tons of gold in all their successful wars they didn’t feel a need to try and create gold via alchemy. Whatever major accomplishments the Greco-Roman alchemists did achieve is lost to time. A professor named Paul Kraus who was an international alchemy authority in the 1930s- Professor Paul had some harsh words. Listen to this excerpt, he wrote quote, “the study of Greek alchemists is not very encouraging. Even the supposed technical writings, in the state where we find them today, are unintelligible nonsense which refuses any interpretation,” end quote. Ouch. But I mean, when you have 20,000 mules bringing in all the gold in Persia -thanks Alexander the Great- can you blame the Greco-Romans for not trying to get gold out of boiling rocks? Anyway, they invented things like democracy, and the Olympics, so let’s forgive them their underachieving alchemists.

An alchemist who was writing things down was an Islamic guy named Jabir ibn Hayyan (jahbear ibin hayyan). We’ve been talking about trying desperately to piece together a picture of history with few and far between resources. We have Indian texts in a rare untranslated language, a few buried Egyptian papers, the Greco-Romans who left no records, but finally historians have a trove of primary documents. But they are not without some mystery. So, there are about a whopping 600 written works credited to Jahbear. They mostly discuss alchemy, chemistry, and magic. Bu the works also cover cosmology, astronomy, medicine, zoology, botany, metaphysics, logic annnnnd grammar. Whew! There is so much writing on so many subjects… historians believe Jahbear might not have been the mythical, prolific alchemist and author his library conveys… Jahbear was probably a pseudonym, a fake name, used by a secret group of Islamic alchemists to keep their collective identity hidden. It’s called ‘pseudepigrapha’ when the stated author of a text isn’t the real author. Historians believe alchemists did this a lot, to keep their identity a secret, to contribute to the mysticism of their practice, who knows really, haha. It just makes reflecting back on the documents and understanding the author kind of tricky. Whoever Jahbear might really have been, his works contain the oldest known systematic classification of substances, giving Jahbear the honor of being called the first father of chemistry.

Written works allow ideas to be transported and that’s what happened with all those Islamic writings. They were translated and brought into western Europe around the year 1144. Like all the alchemists before them, the European practitioners approached their craft with dual goals: transforming base substances into gold and creating immortal life. You know, just little basic things haha. But the European alchemists united those two goals into one singular quest: the philosopher’s stone. Yes, like in “Harry Potter”, the sorcerer’s stone, or the philosopher’s stone for everywhere in the world but America- yeah, the book publishers changed the name for Americans thinking Americans wouldn’t “get” the word ‘philosopher.’ Harsh… but probably true. Anyway, the idea of the philosopher’s stone didn’t originate in Europe. The oldest written mention of the stone is in Greco-Egyptian writings dating from about 300 A.D. Once the European alchemists translated those first writings in the 12th or 13th centuries- they were hooked. Creating a philosopher’s stone was the ultimate goal. But… what exactly is a philosopher’s stone? Apparently, there are two versions that kind of line up with the ancient Chinese’s belief that substances mature over time. The “young” stone is white and can make silver, and a mature master stone, which is described as ‘reddish-purple’ and glasslike, can make not only the precious metal gold but can heal all illness and prolong human life if small bits of the stone are consumed in potions- elixirs of life. Additional historical documents talk about the stone being able to revive dead plants, turn common crystals into diamond, create flexible glass and even clone small objects. Whoa. So… what wouldn’t you do to possibly get your hands on a stone? Or in the case of some cautious leaders… prevent a stone from existing in the first place.

January 13th, 1404, King Henry the fourth signed a law making it a felony to create gold – or silver either, for good measure. He had his bases covered. The alchemy ban was quite technically titled, ‘The Act Against Multiplications.’ King Henry had his reasons- he’d already faced down a handful of rebellions against his rule and he didn’t want to take the chance of a usurper with a huge bankroll of created gold sneaking up and taking his throne. The ban forced a lot of alchemists (already a secretive bunch of folks) even more into the shadows. But what had been going on in the experimental laboratories in Europe prior the ban?

Well, some weird stuff haha, even by alchemy standards. There was a Franciscan friar named Roger Bacon. He is said to have created something called a “talking brazen head,” which is a human head crafted from metal, usually brass or bronze and the brazen head could answer yes or no questions. I hate to use a pun, but I struggle to wrap my head around this invention. Apparently, the talking heads could be powered by steam or water and the original design came from the Islamic world. And the European alchemists liked making them, but once they had… performed, the head would either collapse or explode. That definitely sounds… unnerving. Consider this is happening in the 13th century, Europe is still considered to be in the Dark Ages and was hostile to speculative ideas. I mean, this is the prime time of witch hunts and superstitions. The lure of possible infinite golden treasures from alchemy couldn’t outweigh the fear of black magics… so alchemy was banned.

The ban remained in place for 285 years until a man named Robert Boyle came along. Robert Boyle was boring in 1627 in Ireland but came to England to go to school starting at age 8. To say Boyle was a little bit smart is like saying the Pope is a little bit Catholic… it’s an understatement. Boyle was an intellectual jack of all trades; along with being an alchemist, he was a chemist, physicist, philosopher and inventor. His book, “The Sceptical Chymist” is considered a cornerstone of the field of modern chemistry, it’s author the distinction of being considered the first modern chemist. He also famously discovered “Boyle’s Law” which explains the behavior of a gas held at a constant temperature. So, yeah… Boyle is a legit, real-world smart guy. And we can think Robert Boyle for recognizing the need to erase past stigmas of alchemy; he successfully lobbied for the repeal of King Henry’s alchemy ban in 1689. Boyle stated publicly, quote, “while the ban remains in force, it will be a great discouragement to the industry of skillful men which is very happily improved in this inquisitive age,” end quote. And it worked! The ban was removed. Now, Boyle believed in sharing information between fellow alchemists and other scientists- a bit of an anomaly in that secretive world. Boyle is documented numerous times saying basically ‘if we don’t share what we know with each other, it’s going to seriously slow down scientific advancements.’ Boyle really led the charge as the practice of alchemy began to shift from the realm of mysticism and magic much more openly into structure science. Boyle practiced what he preached about sharing information- he had a lot of pen pals, and he gave lectures and wrote books. One of his friends he shared info with has a name we all know… Sir Isaac Newton. In life they shared notes and experiments, but Boyle’s knowledge exchange to Newton continued after his death as well; he left some of his prized rare alchemical substances to Newton in his will.

We all know of Sir Isaac Newton for his laws of motion and for the discovery of a little thing called gravity. But Newton actually dedicated a huge amount of time to alchemy. We know of about a million words he wrote on the subject. I’ll give you some context perspective: Newton’s master catalog of all his work contains about ten million words… so that’s a significant amount of his life dedicated to alchemy. Now, he was on-brand with his level of secrecy he shrouded around his alchemical writings. He used metaphors, obscure symbols, and codes. He gave his homemade creations from his lab names such as “Green Lion”, “Neptune’s Trident” or “Scepter of Love.” It all sounds magical and romantic until you try and study his notes further to try and figure out what the heck he made and the ambiguity is just annoying, haha We’re still not sure what most of those creations really were. Though one of Newton’s experiments was decoded and it provides some insight into why emperors and kings were nervous about precious metals multiplying. Newton called the experiment, the “Tree of Diana.” You immerse a combo of silver and mercury in nitric acid containing still more dissolved silver and mercury and lo and behold, tiny twiglike branches of solid silver bloom into life in the liquid. Today we know this is a chemical process but seeing the delicate silver tendrils spread you can’t blame Newton for thinking he had “grown” a precious metal.

All the true scientific work of men like Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton helped alchemy undergo a public relations makeover. It was not darkness and cauldrons, not misguided pseudoscience, but it was the growing of so much more. Ancient alchemy was a vital steppingstone phase of experimentation leading humans to the establishment of modern chemistry. A profession that began with goals seemingly more aligned with the stuff of fairy tales; creating gold and silver, a drink that gives eternal life… but the path of those fantastical quests is paved with real concrete achievements. The creation of gunpowder, inventing numerous processes such as distillation, the process of creating perfumes and whiskey, the scientific method, a uniform system for classifying materials, the creation of steel. Truly, alchemy’s greatest transformation was becoming modern chemistry.

So, the facts of alchemy grew and developed, but the fantasy did not all fade away. The mythical, millennia long quest to create gold did eventually succeed. I can’t speak to the existence of an elixir of everlasting life, but creating gold? Humans achieved that goal. But not in a dark medieval chamber, but in just about the most science-y high tech way possible.

Let’s transition… with a dad joke. Why can’t you trust atoms? …Because they make up everything. Ba-dum-tisss. Well, it’s true. Everything in existence is made up of atoms. Atoms have a center nucleus made of protons and neutrons and then electrons out in valances around the nucleus. You can add or remove a proton from a nucleus to change an element, but this requires a nuclear reaction. That fact shines a light on the sad futility of the thousands of years of alchemists just trying their best to turn lead into gold… they only had chemical and physical reactions at their disposal; things like burning, crushing, fermenting, and boiling. Chemical and physical reactions can never change a nucleus of an atom, and thus, create gold. Now, gold as a chemical element has 79 protons in it’s atomic nucleus. And mercury… the liquid metal the ancient alchemists were so obsessed with- well mercury has 80 protons. And on October 1st, 1941, 3 scientists named Sherr, Bainbridge and Anderson published a paper titled, “Transmutation of Mercury by Fast Neutrons.” They used a cyclotron particle accelerator at Harvard University to shoot neutrons at mercury until one of its 80 protons came off and ta-da! Alchemy achievement unlocked… you’ve created gold!

Unfortunately, this gold was radioactive and supremely hazardous. And it’s life was short-lived- the synthesized gold underwent radioactive decay within just a few days and was no longer gold. So, while an amazing statement to be able to make: we turned mercury into gold- the process is not economical viable and the created gold that lasts less than a week would give you cancer if you got near it. Not ideal…

There hasn’t been much interest from professional academia to continue the alchemical work of questing for gold. And while imagining the ancient alchemist we might envision a fairy-tale wizard in robes or a mad scientist in googles. But the man in history who truly reached the highest level of alchemy was a Swedish-American chemist named Glenn Seaborg. But Glenn Seaborg wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill chemist. His resume is so long and impressive; he was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the person with the longest biography in ‘Who’s Who In America.’ Seaborg’s greatest hits I guess I could say is working on the Manhattan project, winning the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering TEN new radioactive elements, including plutonium. Speaking of elements, he has his own element named after him, element 106 or ‘seaborgium.’ He had over 50 honorary doctorates and wrote over 500 journal articles. He even has an asteroid named after him. Well, in 1980 at Lawrence Berkley Laboratory, Seaborg ran an experiment. He took an element called bismuth-209, which is a brittle metal crystal that looks like a pile of iridescent building blocks, Seaborg took a couple thousand bismuth-209 atoms and used nuclear physics to remove protons and neutrons to the turn the bismuth… into gold. Another fun fact about bismuth- it is a very stable element that is frequently substituted for lead because its nontoxic. So, Glenn Seaborg truly did successfully complete the pinnacle of transmutation…. A base metal into gold. However, it’s not like we’re going to be wearing synthesized gold jewelry any time soon, though I can think of almost nothing cooler. The ‘few thousand atoms’ Seaborg turned into gold is a quantity so small it can only be seen under a microscope. It’s been calculated that using Seaborg’s technique to produce one ounce of gold would cost approximately a quadrillion dollars. A quadrillion is one million billion dollars. But hey- at least the teeny tiny amount created wasn’t radioactive! Once Seaborg proved this experiment was possible… no one has done it again. That we know of… After all, alchemists are legendarily secretive.

I think it is human nature to always be questing… to be seeking. In modern times we’re sending rockets into space, building high tech labs, just always searching, striving to answer all reiterations of “what if-”? Human curiosity is in no way a revelation of recent times- I would submit that the peoples of the past were even more inquisitive because they had so many more unknowns. Perhaps few things have intrigued humans more than gold. How instantly puzzling the shiny yellow metal found whole and loose through the natural world must have been. You can’t blame the ancient cultures for attributing divine qualities to help explain gold and it’s unique properties. We can thank gold for inspiring mankind to take action on their curiosities; to seek to understand and yes… create, gold. Because all through the thousands of years the gold quest brought so many amazing discoveries to humanity. I guess this would be the quintessential situation where it’s not the destination but the journey. Especially when you considered the final destination of synthesized gold seems to be any combination of radioactive, ludicrously expensive and temporary. Perhaps somethings just are best appreciated for the natural state of themselves. But the next time you watch fireworks, wear perfume, drive over a steel bridge, use the scientific method… maybe take a pause to thank gold for being such a motivator for curiosity and discovery.

That’s all for this episode of Tea and Gemstones. While “A Casual History of Gold” has taken us on a broad wide journey across galaxies, multiple continents and through time… I wanted to conclude the series by looking at gold’s influence a bit closer to *my* home… the United States. What role did gold play in the development of the America we know? The borders, our states, the culture and the economy? Sometimes the hardest place to analyze is your own backyard but next episode I give it a casual historical try. I hope you’ll tune in.

Check out Tea & Gemstones on Instagram and let me know what you’re thinking about the series as it’s now 75% done! Tea & Gemstones also uploads all episodes to Youtube if you’d like to catch up through that medium and check out the podcast show notes for a link to our website. There you’ll find full transcripts of every episode and the bibliographies. Our theme music if by Joseph McDade. It has been a pleasure hanging out with you, I have been your host, Jennifer. So, until next time, Stay Sparkly.