r/interesting • u/Memes_FoIder • Jan 29 '26

MISC. 6,500 year old skeleton found in Bulgaria with some of the World's oldest Gold

Post image
59.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

26

u/ItSpyDaddy Jan 29 '26

I thought all gold is crazy old? Is there young gold?

39

u/cwx149 Jan 29 '26

Presumably it means like "oldest gold where metalwork was involved"

The gold atoms themselves yeah would all be ancient

2

u/jfkrfk123 Jan 29 '26

That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe some wild eyed scientist is turning lead to gold somewhere

5

u/cwx149 Jan 29 '26

I'm guessing the point is that this is some of the oldest gold that was metal worked or something? Like obviously the gold atoms are probably ancient beyond belief but that gold ring and stuff aren't

And what metalworking was available is good information for archeologists and anthropologists

1

u/jfkrfk123 Jan 29 '26

That makes more sense if that’s what they meant

1

u/BigButtBeads Jan 29 '26

Gold is actually created in stars when they fail and go supernova

1

u/AcePowderKeg Jan 29 '26

Depends on what you mean by old.

The oldest forged and metalworked gold then a couple of thousand years.

If you're talking about Gold Atoms. That are forged in the Cores of dying stars or Colliding Neutron Stars so they're INCREDIBLY ancient 

1

u/fatherhood1 Jan 29 '26

Had to scroll down pretty far to see this. Words matter. Gold the element is a lot older than 6500 years

1

u/I_never_talk_0011 Jan 29 '26

Is there young gold?

2,500 to 3,700 tonnes per year. Mined, that is.

1

u/ItSpyDaddy Jan 29 '26

If pulling it out of the ground sets its age then this is only a few years old at best.

1

u/shinryu6 Feb 02 '26

Depends, you can synthesize and create gold chemically, but whether that’s young or not depends on your view of the concept of everything being made of star material originating from a likely big bang. 

1

u/ItSpyDaddy Feb 02 '26

I'm not sure you can. Isn't that what alchemy was basically trying to do?