Excerpt 1 Mankinds fascination with gold is as old as civilization itself. The ancien
t Egyptians esteemed gold, which had religious significance to them, and King Tutankharnun was buried in a solid-gold coffin 3,300 years ago. The wandering Israelites worshiped a golden calf, and the legendary King Midas asked that everything he touched be turned into gold. Excerpt 2 Most economists hate gold. Not, you understand, that they would turn up their noses at a bar or two. But they find the reverence in which many hold the metal almost irrational. That it was used as money for millennia is irrelevant: it isnt any more. Modern money takes the form. of paper or, more often, electronic data. To economists, gold is now just another commodity. Excerpt 3 People have always longed to possess gold. Unfortunately, this longing has also brought out the worst in the human character. The Spanish conquistadors robbed palaces, temples, and graves, and killed thousands of Indians in their ruthless search for gold. Often the only rule in young California during the days of the gold rush was exercised by the mob with a rope. Even today, the economic running of South Africas gold mines depends largely on the employment of black laborers who are paid about 40 pounds a month, plus room and board, and who must work in conditions that can only be described as cruel. About 400 miners are killed in mine accidents in South Africa each year, or one for every two tons of gold produced. Excerpt 4 Much of golds value lies in its scarcity. Only about 80,000 tons have been mined in the history of the world. All of it could be stored in a vault 60 feet square, or a supertanker. Excerpt 5 So why is its price soaring？ Over the past week, this has topped $ 450 a troy ounce, up by 9% since the beginning of the year and 77% since April 2001. Ah, comes the reply, gold transactions are denominated in dollars, and the rise in the price simply reflects the dollars fall in terms of other currencies, especially the euro, against which it hit a new low this week. Expressed in euros, the gold price has moved much less. However, there is no iron link, as it were, between the value of the dollar and the value of gold. A rising price of gold, like that of anything else, can reflect an increase in demand as well as a depreciation of its Unit of account. Excerpt 6 This is where gold bulls come in. The fall in the dollar is important, but mainly because as a store of value the dollar stinks. With a few longish rallies, the greenback has been on a downward trend since it came off the gold standard in 1971. Now it is suffering one of its sharper declines. At the margin, extra demand has come from those who think dollars—indeed any money backed by nothing more than promises to keep inflation low—a decidedly risky investment, mainly because America, with the worlds reserve currency, has been able to create and borrow so many of them. The least painful way of repaying those dollars is to make them worthless.
The main idea of Excerpt 1 is that______.
A．human beings began to love gold with the emergence of civilization
B．the ancient Egyptians valued gold for its religious importance
C．king Midas was a person who could turn everything into gold
D．king Tutankharnun buried a solid-gold coffin 33 centuries ago
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