Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ix. (191 5), No. 1. 27 



distances. A glance at the maps will at once show the 

 truth of this remark. Ireland, Wales, Devon and Corn- 

 wall, France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Macedonia, 

 Thrace, Troad, Lydia, Armenia, Nigeria, Arabia, Thibet, 

 Assam and Chota Nagpur, are among the places 

 where gold was washed in antiquity. This widespread 

 search for gold is highly significant. It implies that 

 gold had acquired a value as currency. Perhaps I may 

 quote Mr. C. W. King on this subject. " Pliny," says he, 

 " launches out into a set of reflections in his own quaint 

 style, astonished as to what possible motives could have 

 induced all mankind to make gold, wherever known, the 

 first and chiefest representative of value. It was and 

 is indeed a strange coincidence in the notions of races, 

 however remote from or unconnected with one another, 

 that must early have puzzled every observer." 41 And 

 so on. According to the thesis here put forward the wide 

 acceptance of gold as a standard would be the result of 

 Egyptian influence. It would seem that gold came to 

 have a standard of value in Egypt, and that it was the 

 first form of currency. This would mark an event in the 

 history of mankind of the first importance. With a 

 commodity capable of universal barter, wealth could be 

 stored .up, and, where large quantities of it existed, there 

 could civilisations be founded. The Egyptians had 

 immense gold mines. De Launay tells us that " there 

 were manifestly several great mining centres in Asia 

 Minor five centuries before Christ, which are known to us 

 through Herodotus " In Chaldea, he says also, " gold 

 was present in lodes and sand." Indeed, " the earliest 

 centres of gold mining were evidently in the zone of the 

 most ancient civilisations, in Armenia, Chaldea, Asia 

 Minor, and Egypt." 42 These coincidences cannot be 



41 Op. ciL, p. 93. 



42 Op. cit., pp. 82, 84. 



