> And other metals are denser and heavier, making them hard to transport. Gold is the 8-th densest chemical element, and by far the densest element know to man

> And other metals are denser and heavier, making them hard to transport. Gold is the 8-th densest chemical element, and by far the densest element know to mankind until the discovery of platinum and tungsten (slightly less dense, but very close) in the 18th century. I don't have a source for this, but I suspect that part of its popularity was because being so dense made it impossible to counterfeit. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements (sort the list by density)