These features are `unique ish` in the sense that they're not unique alone to gold, but their combination with the items mentioned in the thread grant them particular functionality as an intermediary asset for trading.
* Fungible. There are early methods for detecting and measuring purity (Late Egyptians I believe) which means that one unit of gold is obviously interchangeable with another unit. Not the case for jewels, livestock, crafts.
* Divisible. Two pieces of one unit can be combined to make two units. Two units can be split to make one unit. Again, better than jewels, livestock, slaves, crafts.
* Portable/durable. Small, light, dry, durable. Much better than oil, water, stone (these were used on some pacific islands).
* Distinct. With a small handful of exceptions which weren't readily available in pre-industrial revolution, there's nothing that looks and behaves like gold. Jewels, metals, crafts all gonna fail this.
* Persistent. A lot of other metal candidates are going to fail this test.
Does anyone have any knowledge about whether Gold use spread like other ideas or if there was convergent discovery all over the world?