Hello, everyone, welcome. I’m so glad you’ve found your way to this podcast- this is Tea & Gemstones, and I am your host, Jennifer. This is a place for talking about anything and everything to do with jewelry, from pop culture, science, history, to art and design. This is the second episode in our series “A Casual History of Gold”. I suppose you can hop around and listen out of order, ha- you are the master of your own headphones after all; but if you missed our first episode, I suggest backtracking one episode down in the playlist and catching up, because that can help establish a good baseline of beginnings of the intersections of gold and mankind.
In our first episode we answered what you’d think would be simple questions… but it’s quickly obvious that anything to do with gold is never uncomplicated. The most basic question: “Where does gold come from?” requires us to both contemplate the origin birth stories of our universes’ stars and the geology of our home planet. We talked about how unique gold is, that is it a non-tarnishing metal that can be found whole and loose scattered around in nature, for anyone to pick up and find. Since before written history, humans have been picking up and finding the shiny nuggets and putting them to use- especially as jewelry and as objects that carried the highest amount of respect. But gold isn’t just a pretty face… it starts going to work, namely as currency… coins start showing up in 600 BC. And finally, we rounded out the episode by diving into the golden cultures of Ancient Egypt and Greece. Okay, that was your bullet point synopsis. For our second episode we are looking at gold as a motivator for what I call ‘dark exploration.’ That is, exploration that comes with a deadly price-tag. What happens when the lust for gold is so great, it drives one nation to nearly wipe others from history.
Throughout time, all across the world, gold has been considered the most precious and sacred of metals. We know this by seeing the amazing golden creations made in the past. We have gained so much historical information from the Egyptian gold artifacts beautifully preserved through the millennia. But what does it mean for history, for our ability to look back at once was, when a culture’s most valuable precious metal objects are not cherished and studied, but instead literally liquidated to become another culture’s economical asset? That’s the story of gold in the New World.
It is fascinating to me how cultures totally isolated from each other each revered gold in very similar ways. Across the oceans, a world away from the Mediterranean cultures were the peoples of South and Central America. Remember I said the Egyptians called gold “the skin of the gods?” The Incan civilization of what is now Peru called gold “the sweat of the sun.” The sun was their god, Viracocha, and gold was his physical blood and sweat on earth. The Incan Empire did not use money, they used an agriculturally based bartering and exchange system. The Incas would never dream of using gold, the personified blood of their deity, to buy a blanket or an animal. To the Incas, gold went beyond material value to a higher level; the craft of working gold was a religious ritual in itself. The Incan king or emperor was called, ‘the Sapa Inca’, or “the son of the sun.” Only the Sapa Inca was allowed to wear gold.
To the north of the Incas were the Aztecs. The Aztecs had an equally abundant gold supply as the Incas and they held the yellow metal in similar veneration. The word for gold in Nahuatl (naa-waa-tl), the dialect of the Aztecs, is ‘teocuitlatl’ (tee-ah-cue-it-lah), which means… ‘excrement of the gods.’ So we just about have a whole heavenly body covered with the gold terminology… Egypt calls it the skin, Incas the sweat and blood. And the Aztecs… the excrements. Similar to the Inca’s hierarchy, the Aztec emperor controlled all gold mines and goldsmith workshops. Gold was not used as currency (actually the Aztec used cacao seeds for money), but gold was only for personal adornment and to craft objects for funerary purposes- basically to make really, really fancy beautiful golden objects for people to be buried with, to show off their wealthy status in the afterlife. The Incas mined most of their gold, and the Aztecs mined a little, but the Aztec emperor mostly built up his royal treasury with a steady incoming stream of gold gifts as taxes and tribute from the numerous city-states all around the empire’s capital city of Tenochtitlan (tuh-no-cheet-lan).
For centuries, perhaps thousands of years, these empires existence had been unknown to anyone else in the world, even as the Spanish ventured closer and closer in the late 1400s to early 1500s. Gold and other precious resources were huge driving forces for European countries sending exhibitions across the Atlantic. Initially a fabled “northwest passage” for easier access to the spices of India is what drove men to sail towards unknown horizons. Now, I understand using the word ‘discover’ about the Americas is problematic. Obviously there had been Indigenous populations living in the European’s so called ‘New World’ for thousands of years before the first white man showed up. But, in the eyes of the Europeans the lands were quote unquote “new discoveries” to them. So I’ll use the word ‘discovered’ under those terms. So, the ‘discovery’ of the precious metals of the Central and South Americas were a powerful incentive. The country with the greatest lust for treasure was Spain. The fancy historian way to frame Spanish motivations for colonial expansion is to say the Spanish had goals of profit through resource extraction, expanding territory and to spread Christianity. Or you could say, “Gold, Glory, God.” On the topic of resource extraction… “Resource extraction” to put it bluntly, means put anything worth anything on a boat and send it back to Spain. This job was done by conquistadors, or ‘soldiers of fortune.’ Conquistadors were men who signed up for the risky expeditions, often having to provide their own armor and supplies. They gambled their lives for the promised outcome that the trip would culminate in vast wealth to spilt among all participants. The Spanish king and queen sent out boat after boat towards the Americas, starting with “in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. And a lot of boats followed in the years after him. The first 25 years of Spanish involvement in the Americas consisted of them decimating the native population of several Caribbean islands through a deadly combo of disease, slavery and hard labor to farm sugar cane and mine the surface level gold deposits. But in 1519 a man named Hernan Cortes decided to take an expedition westward to the central American mainland, and the world’s view of gold would be forever changed.
Hernan Cortes was a successful Spanish New World settler. He had participated in the conquests of Hispaniola and Cuba and had been rewarded with a home on some land in Cuba. For 15 years he farmed, kept cattle and dabbled in local politics. He served as secretary for the Cuban Governor, Diego Velazquez, and had even served as mayor of the Cuban capital. In 1518 an expedition force out of Cuba had gone to the mainland of central America. They sent back word to Governor Velazquez that there was definitely gold with the natives here, but they didn’t have the manpower to conquer them, would the governor please send more men? Cortes jumped at the opportunity for “gold, glory” and I supposed God too, because he recruited a priest to come along. But mostly gold and glory, because he also signed up 500 men who definitely weren’t priests to go conquering with him. Now Cortes and the Governor didn’t really get along very well because Cortes had married the Governor’s sister-in-law and he notoriously wasn’t faithful to her. So right before Cortes was due to leave on his glorious mission, Governor Velazquez decided to put someone else in charge and ordered Cortes to stay put at home. Cortes heard this and disobeyed the order. Almost overnight, in February 1519, Cortes sped out of Cuba with 11 ships. When he landed in Veracruz, Mexico he and his men won a quick battle with the natives. Cortes then declared himself out of the service of Governor Velazquez of Cuba and that he would only answer to King Charles of Spain. Cortes claimed the land for the Spanish crown and then deliberately sank his ships so none of his men could retreat. It was gold and glory, or death.
The Aztec leader at this time was Emperor Montezuma II. He was politically savvy in his realm of the world, and when word reached him of conquistadors landing on his shores, he approached the situation strategically. Since the Aztecs believed gold to be a physical embodiment of their god- giving a golden object was a gift of the highest honor. Montezuma sent Aztec representatives to met Cortes with gifts of treasure. The thought was the Spanish would take the gifts as appeasement and leave. Poor Montezuma, this backfired. Basically, he showed Cortes, ‘look at all this gold we have, and we’re just handing some of it over!’ Cortes had sunk all eleven of his ships, he wasn’t going to leave now. He and his men marched on towards the Aztec capital. Along the way, Cortes actually gathered natives to his cause of bringing down the Emperor… the little city states all around the capital were tired of giving taxes and tributes (including human sacrifices, that doesn’t make a lot of friends) to Montezuma. Cortes and his indigenous allies march on Tenochtitlan, and Montezuma lets them peacefully enter the city. Historians believe the misguided Emperor still thought he could placate the strangers with enough gifts to entice them to leave, or he could keep them entertained long enough to figure out how to kill them. Unfortunately, Montezuma underestimated both his people’s technological disadvantages and the Spanish’s desire for gold. Cortes considered the Aztec’s initial gifts as the tip of a golden iceberg. He took Montezuma hostage in his own palace and had the Emperor give him all the information of the Aztec’s gold mines and stockpiles of treasures. Under Cortes’ instructions, Montezuma gave public speeches that the Spanish were here in the city under his willing invitation. For almost one hundred days Cortes, his men, and his allies lived off the people in the city and worked to gather all the Aztec gold for themselves.
But remember Governor Velazquez? Well, he is pissed. And he has sent a massive expedition of men after Cortes to arrest him for insubordination. Cortes is sitting pretty in luxury at Tenochtitlan with no real exit plan, but he decides he sure isn’t letting Velazquez get ahold of him or his claimed treasures. Cortes leaves the capital and goes to the coastline to meet the new expedition. Get this, Cortes fights Velazquez’s forces in a battle, wins, and then tells the losers, “hey- I’ve got a city of gold with a puppet ruler under my command, wanna join me and party?” And the losers are like, “absolutely!” So, Cortes marches back into the capital with more men than he left with. But unfortunately for Cortes, while he was away from the city dealing with the people trying to arrest him, the Aztecs got fed up of dealing with Montezuma, who clearly was under the control of the Spanish. The guy Cortes left in charge while he was gone ordered a bunch of Aztec nobles killed, thinking that would scare the Aztecs into submission, and it... well it didn’t. Cortes gets back into the city and discovers his men and Montezuma sieged up in a couple buildings and the Aztecs have elected a new emperor. Cortes is really annoyed by this, and he makes Montezuma go out on a balcony to give a rousing speech to the public to put them on his side… and the Aztec people apparently threw rocks and darts at Montezuma when he is on the balcony and he dies. Later the Aztecs say the Spanish killed him, the Spanish stick to the story the Aztecs kill him… but either way, Emperor Montezuma is dead. Cortes’ goal is now to escape with all the gold he’s been collecting for over three months from the Aztecs. He sends a message to the new Aztec leader asking for a one-week ceasefire and promising at the end of the week, the Spanish will give back all the gold and peacefully leave the city. Well, this is a lie. Cortes plans to leave the city that very night. Now, Tenochtitlan is an island city, with eight bridges connecting it to land. The Aztecs have damaged four of those bridges to prevent the Spanish from doing exactly what they’re trying to do- escape. So, this night that Cortes makes his escape, Spanish history calls it, “La Noche Triste”, or “the night of sorrows”, literally “the sad night.” That should give you a big ol’ clue as to how well their escape is going to go. Spoiler alert- poorly. Cortes and his men tried to build a portable bridge to get off the island city, they are spotted early in their escape, and the Aztecs, rightly thinking Cortes was gonna try and flee, had hundred of armed canoes waiting all around. Because Cortes had insisted on trying to take as much gold as possible, and yall- gold is heavy… a lot of men and all the horses drowned, they fell in the water and they were weighed down by how much treasure they had strapped to themselves, they drowned.
Cortes somehow escaped alive, he made it out with a handful of men. Almost no gold treasure made it out with them, the whole purpose of the expedition. Records are mixed, but about 450 Spanish died and about 4,000 natives. That’s why Spanish historians call the escape La Noche Triste for the quote, loss of great life and great treasure, unquote. And unfortunately for the Aztecs, they were in for a lot more than one bad night- Cortes regrouped his forces, received reinforcements from Cuba and returned to conquer Tenochtitlan (tuh-no-cheet-lan) in 1521. He claimed the city for Spain and renamed the capital, Mexico City. But there are still legends of the lost gold in the water, the plunder of the great Aztec empire that has never been found.
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The Aztec Empire showed the Spanish a realized world of golden treasure previously confined to fantasy. Once they had seen the abundance of precious metals a native population could possess, they sought out more New World conquests. Difficult terrain of tropical jungles, high mountains, rough seas, strange diseases, hostile natives, lack of food and medicine supplies did not deter the ‘soldiers of fortune.’ There is no motivator quite like gold.
When Spanish forces led by conquistador Francisco Pizarro landed on the coast of Ecuador in 1531, they were entering a weakened Inca Empire consumed with inner turmoil. Remember the ruler of the Inca’s is called the Sapa Inca? Well, five years before Pizarro arrives, the Sapa Inca Huayna (whyna) Capac had contracted smallpox. Smallpox is a wicked viral disease Europeans had introduced to the continent, and it ravaged the indigenous people who had no immunity. And Sapa Inca Huayna died, and so did his eldest son. Now the Incas didn’t have a clear line of succession laid out. This seems like a big oversight to their political system, but unfortunately, that’s the way it was. Huayna had multiple wives, and one of his marriages was actually to his sister, in order to maintain a ‘pure’ royal bloodline. This type of royal inbreeding was very common in Europe, ironically the Spanish royal family participated in these types of unions the most. Huayna and his sister wife had a son named Huascar. (wazcarr). Huascar was technically the next oldest child of the Sapa Inca, had the ‘purest’ blood, and he was physically in the Inca’s capital city, Cuzo, when his father died. So Sapa Inca Huayna dies, and Huascar declares himself the new Sapa Inca. But Huascar has a… popularity problem. His problem is… no one likes him. He is described as being “ill-tempered, overall suspicious and disrespectful of the law.” “Disrespectful of the law”… meaning Huascar had a bad habit of taking things that didn’t belong to him. Historical records show he liked to claim other people’s family land after someone died, and other men’s wives for his playthings… while the husbands were still very much around to protest. So, Huascar the unliked is in the capital city and he declares he is the new head guy in charge of the Inca Empire. But Huascar has another problem besides not being anyone’s miss congeniality… his younger brother, Atahualpa (aa-tuh-hoo-al-puh).
Atahualpa’s mother was a woman from outside the conventional ‘royal line,’ so he did not have as solid a claim to the throne as Huascar. But Atahualpa was young, handsome, and really well liked by the general public and especially the Incan military, who Atahualpa served with. Historical records state Atahualpa was a man of “cunning and early wisdom.” Lots of Incas wanted Atahualpa to be king instead of Huascar. To Atahualpa’s credit, when his big brother declared himself Sapa Inca, Atahualpa was okay with it. When his father died, Atahualpa was in north Peru with the army, nowhere near the capital city of Cuzco. He gathered up a sizable offering of gold and silver objects – remember, the Incas believed gold was the physical manifestation of their god’s blood and sweat on Earth, so this was a precious gift to give. Atahualpa sent his gift with some messengers to Huascar to be like “congratulations, bro.” Huascar met this gift visit with great suspicion. He declared his younger brother to be a bastard in open rebellion. He then thought it would be a great idea to kill half of Atahualpa’s messengers. And then records state, he had the remaining half dress up as women and march back in shame to order Atahualpa to come surrender to Huascar in person.
Well then. Atahualpa did not like that Huascar had killed half his friends and shamed the others. He basically decided, “okay, you think I’m in rebellion to you, then I really WILL be in rebellion.” Atahualpa prompted declared a new capital city, that he was the real Sapa Inca, and anyone who didn’t like Huascar could come support him. And that was a lot of people. A bunch of high-ranking generals deserted Cuzco and went to Atahualpa’s new capital. Huascar’s suspicions were now made reality, by his own actions, though he probably didn’t see it that way. And for the next five years, the Inca Empire is torn apart from the inside by a terrible civil war between the two brothers. There are some crazy stories from this war, and I could see HBO making a mini-series out of it. At one point Huascar captures Atahualpa and then when he and his men get drunk to celebrate, a prostitute sneaks into camp and sets Atahualpa free and he escapes. Atahualpa kills Huascar’s best friend and turns his skull into a gold covered drinking cup… we know this because four years after he did it, when Atahualpa encounters the Spanish, he is still using his favorite skull cup. Talk about a creative use for gold.
The Inca Civil War between the brothers reached a conclusion almost simultaneously as the Spanish made their arrival. The Spanish were led by a man named Francisco Pizarro. Francisco had been born to a dirt-poor family in Spain. He started out in life trying to be a farmer like his father. But when he was 36, he decided going adventuring to the New World sounded like much more fun, and he signed up to be a settler in South America. He was a part of a few different colonies, he actually went with a sailing expedition that ended up discovering the Pacific Ocean for Spain. Pizarro, like Cortes, became a mayor, Pizarro was in charge of a town in Panama, and he got pretty rich being the mayor. But he wanted adventure and he wanted to make discoveries. He used his own money to fund an expedition into Peru. Disease and hardships forced the expedition back to Panama without much material success to show for it… however, from this first trip, Pizarro had heard legends of a king in the mountains, surrounded by gold. Pizarro scraped together all the money he had left and tried to get into Peru a second time… no dice, men dying of disease, had to go back. Pizarro wouldn’t give up. He had a vision of the possible treasure, and he would risk anything to get it. Pizarro sent a letter to the king of Spain asking if he could “pretty please go and try and conquer the mysterious golden king in the name of Spain.” And the Spanish king said “okay, I’ll help.” So, Pizarro gets a third try. He lands on the coast in 1531. He begins proceeding inland and is shocked at the destruction of cities and the devastation among the Inca people. Through interpreters, Pizarro finds out about the long running civil war between the brothers and the smallpox epidemic ravaging the Empire. But the war has just ended! Atahualpa’s generals have captured Huascar in the capital of Cuzco just recently, and Atahualpa is celebrating and resting in a nearby town with a hot spring, a town named Cajamarca (kaa-huh-maar-kuh). Pizarro decided to head to meet the new Sapa Inca Atahualpa. Atahualpa’s scouts reported to him the 168 strange men in silver armor on horses marching his way, but Atahualpa did not consider the Spanish a threat to him, he was feeling on top of the world, he had just ended a five-year civil war with his brother, he was the Sapa Inca! Let them come! Not a great idea.
Pizarro and his men arrive unhindered at Cajamarca, and they ask for a meeting with Atahualpa. They say, “hey Sapa Inca, come into this little area of town where we are, and let’s hang out.” Now, the Spanish wrote down everything from their expeditions, so we have some primary documents for what happens next. Apparently, Atahualpa put on a great big spectacle of a display- he had the entire road covered with flower petals, and he arrived on a huge portable throne carried by 80 men. He had four other high-ranking lords carried in hammocks march behind him and he had 5,000 soldiers parading in the rear. Spanish records note the abundance of alcohol among the Incas and they point out that Atahualpa in particular was super drunk. But he was celebrating, the war was over and he had been surprised by the Spanish while on his first vacation in half a decade. We know from how Atahualpa fought in the civil war that he was a smart military man, maybe if he hadn’t been drunk and cocky he would have suspected a trap. Because he parades his posse into the Spanish part of the little town for the meeting… and there’s no one there. Not a person to be found. Picture a tumbleweed rolling across an empty street. Atahualpa is standing there, all dressed up, drunk, and confused. Then this little priest comes out of a building, a man named Friar Vincente, and he has an interpreter with him. Friar Vincente starts explaining Catholicism and then he hands Atahualpa a Bible and asks him if he will surrender to King Charles of Spain. Spanish records record Atahualpa saying, “I will be no man’s tributary.” And dropping the Bible onto the ground. Pizarro responds with a cannon shot and all the Spanish conquistadors springing the ambush. They launch their surprise assault, and it is devastating. The Spanish record 1,000 Incas killed, and one Spanish man wounded. Wounded, not dead, just wounded. It’s a massacre.
Pizarro takes Atahualpa hostage and uses him as leverage to prevent the Incas from counterattacking. A counterattack wasn’t really a threat, the Incas were so freaked out by the Spanish’s technological superiority, and they were weak from disease and the civil war. While the Incas scrambled to figure out what to do next, Atahualpa had sobered up and was scheming. He was being held prisoner in a little two room house. Atahualpa suggested to Pizarro that he buy his freedom. Atahualpa claimed he could fill the entire main room of the house with gold, and he could fill the smaller room twice over with silver, if Pizarro would give him two months. Well now. Pizarro had come to Peru looking for treasure and now the captured king was offering to deliver it to him? Okay! Poor Atahualpa seemed to think along the same lines as Montezuma of the Aztecs; gold and silver were the most revered and sacred objects, surely gifts of precious metals would entice the Spanish to leave. The Incas did not know of the sad fate of the Aztecs ten years earlier, they didn’t know this was a flawed strategy. But Atahualpa came through with his offer, the gold and silver flowed out of Cuzco and Incan temples to the little house. And get this, the so-called “Ransom Room” is still standing in Cajamarca, you can go and see it today. It’s main room is 22 feet long and 17 feet wide and 9 feet high. The collected gold and silver was melted down into standard ingots. The Spanish kept detailed records, so we can adjust the monetary value to modern times… Atahualpa gave the Spanish half a billion dollars in gold and silver.
Gold meant more than anything else to the Incas; they used it to craft their religious idols, decorate temples, palaces, they created beautiful commemorative plates to celebrate victories in battle or wonderful harvests. Some of Atahualpa’s ransom items survived intact, they were actually deemed too beautiful to melt down and were sent to the Spanish king. Some of those items included solid gold models of plants, animals and an entire functional water fountain, all gold. This enormous king’s ransom was all for naught, once the gold and silver were fully collected, Atahualpa was like, “hey- so I get to leave in peace now, right?” And the Spanish were spilt on this issue. Some of them wanted to keep Atahualpa alive as a puppet ruler, like how they tried to do with Montezuma in Mexico. However, while Atahualpa had been kept hostage, he had secretly passed along orders for his brother- held prisoner himself in a different city by Atahualpa’s loyalists- he ordered his brother killed. The Spanish found out about this and called it an assassination and used that charge and a bunch of other “crimes” that were really just cultural differences, like having multiple wives and worshiping idols- to hold a mock trial and issue a guilty verdict. I consider it that the Spanish basically made “being an Inca king” a crime punishable by death. Atahualpa was killed by the Spanish in 1533, almost a year after being taken hostage in the ambush at Cajamarca.
Pizarro went on with his conquest and colonizing of Peru. He went to the fallen Inca Empire’s capital city of Cuzco right after having Atahualpa killed. In Cuzco we have records of the Spanish discovered 12 “extraordinarily realistic” life sized soldiers made of solid gold and silver decorating the capital. A solid gold disc the size of a wagon wheel inscribed with tributes to the sun god was pulled from a temple. There is also record of a beautiful sculpture of a woman made of solid gold with silver hair. Multiple life-size solid silver llamas were found. These artistic masterworks were melted down into ingots and sent back to Spain. After removing the city’s treasures, Pizarro decided Cuzco was not suited to be the capital of the new Spanish colony, so Pizarro founded the city of Lima… which is still the capital of Peru today. The Spanish king made Pizarro governor of all of Peru and Pizarro focused his attention on putting the native population to work, particularly in the gold and silver mines. From time of conquest until 1650, the Spanish took approximately 181 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver from the New World. That’s a total value of 11 billion dollars in today’s money. Spanish had an unexpected consequence attached to their new stolen prosperity. The influx of precious metals actually wreaked havoc on the European economy. While Spain steadily imported it’s ill-gotten wealth, prices in Europe rose 500% in about one hundred years.
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The value of what was lost from the indigenous populations of Central and South America cannot just be measured in dollars and percentages. The Aztecs and Inca both revered gold as something truly not of this earth- it was the physical manifestation of their god. Historically, mankind has created it’s most spectacular and meaningful works of art in tribute and inspiration to religion. Think of all the bronze sculptures of angels, Jesus, the virgin Mary. Michelangelo’s sculpture of David, though in marble, not metal. What did the master artisans of the New World craft from their gold and silver, their god’s sweat, blood, and well… for the Aztecs, excrement. It is the cultural and historical loss than cuts the deepest. Almost all of the New World precious metals were melted down into uniform ingots that could be measured and counted. Almost all. Some pieces did survive intact- they were recognized by the Spanish as too beautiful to be destroyed and sent back to the Spanish king. Now, in modern times, some of those golden treasures have found their way back to the homeland. Museo Oro del Peru y Armas del Mundo- the Gold Museum of Peru and Arms of the World was founded in Lima in 1968. If you buy a ticket costing about 8 dollars, you can go in and see over 4,200 Peruvian artifacts, including a pair of gold gloves, a section of a solid gold wall, and a life accurate poseable gold sculpture of a weasel, of all creatures. The museum contains what seems to be a drop of water compared to the ocean in scale of how many gold artifacts the Incans made. Just a precious few survived the Spanish conquest. I guess I would say, it is better than nothing… but to see what once was and wondering what all there could have been, I have to wonder if the gold would not rather have remained in its original created form from all those centuries ago, rather than journey across the ocean into foreign king’s coffers. But gold lust comes with a price, some economists trace present-day Spain’s financial troubles as originating with the country’s new world empire and the massive amounts of gold and silver that came with it.
How far would you go for gold and glory? Across a vast ocean into an unknown land? Face down disease and isolation while wrecking military havoc on indigenous peoples? Plenty of conquistadors said, “yes, sign me up!” They thought the ends justified their means. Gold had that strong a pull for them. Maybe I am oversimplifying the Spanish’s motivations… but haha- I don’t think so. Gold, glory, God. And when historians mention that phrase… gold is always first. It was primary. I believe I can make the declarative statement that because of gold, the continents of North and South America were explored and colonized by the European powers, leading to the countries and cultures we have today. Gold directly incentivized the rapid development of modern economies on two continents, although at a truly staggering human cost of both life and cultural history.
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That’s all for this episode of Tea and Gemstones. We have made some amazing progress exploring this series, “A Casual History of Gold.” Check out Tea & Gemstones on Instagram and let me know what you’re liking… or disliking… about the series so far. Please see the episode notes for a link to Tea and Gemstones’ website which will have a transcript of this episode and the master bibliography for this series. Our theme song is by Joseph McDade. This series “A Casual History of Gold” will continue next time when we talk about how far humans will go for gold… not far in terms of distance, but far into the depths of science, magic, and mystery. Mankind’s quest to create gold leads to mysticism, discovery and death. I hope I have piqued your interest and you’ll tune in. I have been your host, Jennifer. Until next time, Stay Sparkly.