Hey Finn! Did you know that if you gathered up every single gold ring, every gold coin, every pirate treasure, and every gold bar ever mined in the entire history of humans.
SPEAKER_01Wait, and melted it all down into one giant glowing puddle.
SPEAKER_00Exactly! It would only fill up three and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools. That is it. No way! All the gold in the world fits in just three pools. It really does. Welcome to History's Not Boring by kidopoly.com. I'm Mira. And I'm Finn. Today we have a very special shout-out for Lincoln, who is seven years old. Lincoln loves listening to us on car trips. Beep beep.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for taking us along for the ride, Lincoln.
SPEAKER_00Lincoln actually requested today's amazing topic. He wanted to know who first found gold?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, who was the first person to just pick up a shiny rock and go, whoa, what is this?
SPEAKER_00To answer Lincoln's great question, we are going to travel back over 6,000 years. We are talking about ancient treasures, magical metals, and a pharaoh's heavy, shiny mask. So, for thousands of years before money even existed, people were completely obsessed with gold.
SPEAKER_01But why? You can't eat it, and it's too soft to make good swords or tools, right?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. But gold has a magical superpower. It never rusts, never corrodes, and never tarnishes. So it stays perfectly shiny forever. Yes. Imagine an iron sword. If you leave it in the rain, it turns into crumbly red rust. But if you drop a gold coin in the salty ocean and leave it for 2,000 years, it will come out perfectly bright yellow.
SPEAKER_01That is like actual magic.
SPEAKER_00So where did ancient people find it? Because gold is so unreactive, it is found in nature in its pure form. Early humans just walked along riverbanks and stumbled upon heavy pure gold nuggets washing down from the mountains. Just sitting there in the water.
SPEAKER_01I need to start checking more rivers.
SPEAKER_00But the very first massive discovery of gold treasure wasn't found by an ancient person at all. It was found in October 1972 by a 22-year-old tractor driver named Rachel Marinov.
SPEAKER_01Wait, what? 1972? That is not ancient history.
SPEAKER_00Rachel wasn't ancient, but what he found was. He was digging a trench in Varna, Bulgaria, when he saw something shining brightly in the dirt. Did he find a hidden pirate treasure chest? Something much older! Ratio found some shiny ancient bracelets, put them in a shoebox, and told local archaeologists.
SPEAKER_01What did the archaeologists do?
SPEAKER_00They started digging and they uncovered the Varna Necropolis, a massive ancient burial site dating back to 4600 BC. That is over 6,500 years ago. Whoa! What did they find in the graves? They found 294 graves in total. But Grave 43 completely blew their minds. Inside was the skeleton of a man who was around 45 years old, probably a powerful ruler.
SPEAKER_01Did he have gold on him?
SPEAKER_00Oh did he ever? They found 990 separate gold artifacts just in his one grave. 990? How heavy was all that? It weighed 1.5 kilograms, which is about 3.3 pounds of pure gold. He had gold bracelets, beads, and even a solid gold sceptre.
SPEAKER_013.3 pounds of gold on one guy. That is heavier than a large textbook.
SPEAKER_00And here is the craziest statistic, Finn. That one man in Grey 43 had more gold buried with him than had been discovered in the entire rest of the world at that time.
SPEAKER_01No way! He basically owned all the gold in the world.
SPEAKER_00Almost? This discovery proved that 6,500 years ago, humans had already built roaring furnaces, melted gold at almost 2,000 degrees, and shaped it. It is the oldest gold treasure ever found.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so the people in Bulgaria found it first. What happened next?
SPEAKER_00Let's fast forward about 3,000 years to ancient Egypt. By 2600 BC, the Egyptians were mining tons of gold. Because it never loses its shine, they believed it was literally the skin of the gods. The skin of the gods? That sounds kind of spooky. To them, it meant immortality. When a pharaoh died, they covered him in gold so he could become a god in the afterlife. Have you heard of King Tutan Carmoon? Oh yeah, King Tut, the boy king. Right. In 1922, a British archaeologist named Howard Carter had been searching the blazing hot desert of the Valley of the Kings for five years. He was about to give up when a water boy found a hidden stone step. A secret staircase! Yes! They dug down, chipped a hole in the door, and Carter held up a candle. When asked if he could see anything, he famously said, Yes, wonderful things. It was King Tut's untouched tomb. What was the best thing in there? Resting right on the mummy's shoulders was King Tut's death mask. It is 21 inches tall, made of two sheets of hammered gold, and decorated with deep blue lapis lazuli stones. How heavy is it? It sounds massive. It weighs exactly 10.23 kilograms, which is 22.5 pounds.
SPEAKER_0122.5 pounds? That is like balancing a car tire on your head.
SPEAKER_00Exactly! The gold in that mask alone is worth millions of dollars today. But as a historical artifact, it is completely priceless.
SPEAKER_01So what changed after all this? Why is gold still such a big deal today?
SPEAKER_00Because it was beautiful, rare, and lasted forever. Gold became the ultimate symbol of trust. It led to the very first metal coins and became the foundation of money for the whole world.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Okay. Do you have any weird fun fact about gold?
SPEAKER_00I do. Did you know that all the gold on Earth actually came from outer space? Wait, what?
SPEAKER_01Space gold?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Billions of years ago, dead stars collided in massive explosions called supernovas. These explosions created gold dust that drifted through space and crashed into Earth inside meteorites.
SPEAKER_01So every piece of gold jewellery is actually made of exploded alien star dust.
SPEAKER_00It really is. And gold is incredibly malleable, meaning it can be stretched without breaking. If you take just one ounce of gold, a piece the size of a sugar cube, you can stretch it into a wire 50 miles long. 50 miles? From one tiny sugar cube? That is insane. And because we can't just make more supernovas, the amount of gold on Earth is limited. That is why out of the 212,582 tons ever mined, it all fits in just three and a half Olympic swimming pools. Alright, Finn, time for the quiz! Are you ready? Okay, I am ready. Let's do this. First question. All the gold ever mined in human history would fit into three and a half of what? Next one. What was the name of the 22-year-old tractor driver who discovered the oldest gold in 1972? Question three. What country was this oldest gold found in? Here's number four. What did the ancient Egyptians believe gold was? Last question. How heavy is King Tutankhamun's gold death mask? Great job! Let's go through the answers. The first answer is it would fit into three and a half Olympic swimming pools. For question two, his name was Rachel Marinov. three the answer is it was found in Bulgaria. Question four, they believed it was the skin of the gods. And the final answer is it weighs 10.23 kilograms, or 22.5 pounds. I got all of those! What an amazing adventure today! It really was. From a Bulgarian tractor driver in 1972, back 6,500 years to the oldest gold, and then to King Tut's heavy golden mask.
SPEAKER_01I am definitely looking for space gold in the river next time we go on a car trip.
SPEAKER_00If you loved learning about the magic of gold today, we would love it if you left us a five-star review. Just scroll down on your podcast app and tap those five stars.
SPEAKER_01It helps other kids find the show so we can all learn together.
SPEAKER_00Oh, and don't forget to check out our site, kidopoly.com. We've got tons of fun learning games and activities there to keep the adventure going.
SPEAKER_01And if you want a shout out on the show like Lincoln, or just want to say hi, send us an email at hello at kidopoly.com.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time on History's Not Boring. Bye!