Loading ...A Quick Bit of Silver History
A few paragraphs from a piece I just read by Dominic Frisby.
“A Quick Bit of Silver History That I Bet You Didn’t Know
As one of the seven native metals, metals that can be found in nature in pure form, human beings have been using silver since the dawn of civilization and probably before. Its first use was as jewelry.
Its next was money. Silver shekels (about ¼ ounce) were currency in Ancient Mesopotamia, long before the invention of coinage. The words silver and money — argent in French, plata in Spanish — are interchangeable in numerous languages, ancient and modern.
Silver even has its own planet, the moon, and its own day of the week, Monday.
Silver’s use as money started to die after the gold rushes of the 19th century dramatically increased world gold supply, so that by 1900 every major nation in the world, except China, was on a gold standard.
Bimetallism was a thing of the past. With silver no longer money, demand for it fell, despite the fact that it probably has more applications than any other metal. The price has mostly struggled ever since.”
I didn’t know about “silver having it’s own day – Monday.” Maybe with this Monday being Memorial Day in the US, but Asian and other world markets open, Silver can get back on track with the recent strong, upward trend?
The whole moon thing seems a bit of poor writing.
It seems he is referring to the term a Silver Moon which is an irrelevant fact.
MOON = ‘MON’DAY has no association to silver.
The rest is pretty interesting.
BTW during the gold rush in Cali and then later in Alaska, there was so much gold that an ounce of silver was equal in value to an ounce of gold for a short period of time.
>>Silver even has its own planet, the moon, and its own day of the week, Monday.<<
Fun Fact:
Besides the stars which maintain a fixed position in the sky relative to each other, there are 7 heavenly bodies that roam the sky and are visible to the naked eye. For ancient astronomers this is meaningful. There are 7 days in a week. Coincidence?
Each weekday is named for one of the visible heavenly bodies. In modern language, to my knowledge, Spanish names for the days of the week most resemble the English names for the heavenly bodies. I surmise that is because Spanish is a Romantic language, similar to Italian, thus Latin.
Monday -Spanish = Lunes – Moon
Tuesday -Spanish = Martes – Mars
Wednesday -Spanish = Miercoles – Mercury
Thursday -Spanish = Jueves – Jupiter
Friday -Spanish = Viernes – Venus
Saturday -Spanish = Saturno – Saturn
Sunday -Spanish = Domingo – Sun
Oops, I messed up on Saturday. Correction follows:
Saturday -Spanish = Sabado – Saturn.
Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi, Samedi, Dimanche. Similar in French, another romantic language. Interesting, and new to me. Thanks guys!