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Nature and history of gold 37

East around 1500 BC. The Greek Historian, Herodotus (484±424 BC), often
called the `father of history' tells of Croesus the last king of Lydia (Western
Turkey) in Mesopotamia who fixed the value of gold and silver by issuing coins
at a standard ratio of 10 parts of silver to one part of gold. Croesus was famous
for his wealth (`rich as Croesus') and was also a devotee of the Oracle of Delphi,
Greece on whom he bestowed great gifts of gold.

1.2.2 Scientific awakenings
Pursuit of a systematic and formalised approach to studies of the physical
environment began in Greece in the 6th century BC when the first Ionian
philosophers, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes sought general principles to
explain natural observations. Thales (640±546 BC) a citizen of Miletus considered
that questions relating to the nature of the world could not be explained by the
whims of gods, questioning any concept that suggested that `how things seemed
were necessarily how they were'. He was not willing to accept an answer that
invoked the gods but insisted that evolution was real and that its effects could be
seen and touched in the world around us. For example, thunder and lightning were
natural events and not simply due to an angry Zeus nor was `broad bosomed Earth'
created by Chaos. As a celebrated astronomer, Thales was apparently among the
first to determine solstices and equinoxes, and his creation of a model of the Earth
was based upon what he could actually perceive. He is also believed to have
invented the sundial and to have produced the first geographical map but
nevertheless he could not divorce himself from all ancient speculations and
traditions. One difficulty was in explaining relationships affecting the movement
of air and water. As observed by Adler (2002) in Science Firsts the Earth was to
Thales a flat disc floating on water like a log. Earthquakes were waves formed by
disturbance of the waters. A great river circled the Earth with the sun and other
heavenly bodies being blown around the sky by winds created by the water's
circulation.
Anaximander (610±546 BC), an illustrious pupil of Thales, shared his basic
beliefs but soon devised a more sophisticated picture of the cosmos. By devising
his own models and arriving at his own conclusions he postulated the existence
of apeiron (the boundless), which had neither beginning nor end and whose
basic principle could be compared with the 19th-century concept of `ether'. To
Anaximander, the boundless has always existed and is always in motion; `the
boundless spontaneously generated the rotating germ or seed of the world'. Once
formed, qualities of hot and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness all separate out
and begin to interact. He argued that while the Earth is finite in size it is limited
in duration. He envisioned it at rest cushioned on air within an infinite
symmetrical universe: `It was not dominated by anything and thus was in
equilibrium with no reason to move in any one direction than another' (Adler,
2002).