• 3
    watchers
  • 8
    plays
  • 14
    collected
  • 42m
  • Documentary
Charting the human obsession with gold across the millennia, this is a story of war and conquest, great wealth and great suffering, of human progress and folly. Gold has had an enormous influence on art, religion and myth, the development of money and economic progress through almost all the civilisations in history. Filmed on five continents, The Power of Gold is based on the best-selling book of the same name by Peter L. Bernstein. It is an exciting and accessible history of a substance that has fascinated people and nations from the beginning of time.

3 episodes

Series Premiere

1x01 Gold in the Ancient World

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Gold was highly prized in the ancient world. This program shows how gold was central in mythology and art and how money was invented. Featuring ancient Egypt, Rome and Byzantium.

1x02 Quest and Conquest

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The lust for gold drove Europeans across the ocean to a new world, where conquistadors destroyed whole civilisations in their hunt for the precious metal.
From the ashes of the Inca Empire, Europe was awash with stolen gold.

1x03 Gold Rush

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In the Nineteenth Century, prospectors struck gold in California, Australia and South Africa. With fabulous new supplies, gold became the standard by which everything else was measured. But would this golden age last?

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