The stars of the Earth

Many items have been sought after in human history. First it was fertile land that could yield crops. Next it was the crops that the fertile land yielded.

After people started working iron and bronze, it was metal people tried hard to get. After iron came land, control of trading routes, wood, and so many other things. All of these -- fertile land, crops, metal, wood, including ships, stone, and slaves, have something in common, even though they are so different. During one time or another, the kingdom/empire which had the most of one of these different things was the most powerful in the land.

But this only applied to the medieval times, and earlier, when world maps only showed Europe, northern Africa, and Asia. Since then, the world has grown, to cover all five inhabited continents as well as Antarctica. Many nations are powerful for different reasons. China for its people, the USA mostly for its military power, the UK partly for its trading position. But what makes countries powerful in the end is things from the Earth: Fossil fuels, metals, and also precious stones.

Oil and coal continue to be of much value, and places like Saudi Arabia get rich off of fossil fuels. When people first started coal, they saw an unlimited amount of energy that was easy to get to. But there is a finite amount of everything, and fossil fuels started to run out. Now people are starting to become desperate,  looking under the sea for coal and oil. If people continue mining fossil fuels at the rate they are doing it, there will be an economic crisis within the next one hundred years.

As for metals and precious stones, there are plenty left. And people have been looking for gold for a much, much longer time than they have been looking for oil.

Of metals and stones, gold is the king of them all. Gold does not tarnish or rust, and it has been sought after for more than four millennium. Gold has been mined by the Egyptians to decorate their sarcophagi. Then it was used by the Greeks to decorate pretty much anything in palaces and temples. Then it was used by everyone in currency. Even though gold is not particularly valuable (there was a time when pepper was more valuable than gold!), there was ever only one other metal or crystal that people lusted for as much, and that was diamond.

The problem with diamond is, there is only one way to tell it apart from quartz, and that is to hold it up to the moonlight. But that doesn't stop thousands of people panning for it in Africa. Even though sometimes tainted, diamond is a very beautiful crystal. And it is hard, the hardest substance known to people.

There are many minerals and metals: Jet, quartz, amethyst, smoke quartz, pink quartz, ruby, sapphire, platinum, lead, tungsten, steel, silver, copper, nickel, zinc, mercury, and countless others. People have found a use for all of them, and people could not live without them.