This 18th Century Gold Rush Changed How the World Pans for Gold | National Geographic

Gold is the most powerful metal on earth, and Russia is one of the world's leading suppliers of it. It all began in 1745 when a peasant named Tiara Fade Markov, while looking for crystal, found something else: a tiny gold speck inside a piece of quartz. His discovery changed the history of Russia and the world.

Three years after Markov found the first gold, mines like these popped up all over this region. It was grueling work to get an ounce of gold; miners had to cut, grind, and wash more than 7 tons of raw ore. For the next 66 years, this was the only way to extract gold in Russia until Leo Bruce Nielsen made a revolutionary discovery.

A son of a gold miner, Verse Nielsen discovered that gold flecks also existed in the sediment of local riverbeds. He then developed an ingenious panning technique based on a simple principle: Gold is heavier than rock and sand, and if washed properly, it will sink to the bottom of a pan. By 1816, only two years later, half of all gold in Russia was obtained using Persson's method.

Because it was now accessible to everyone, people from all over Russia flocked here to get rich quick, and so the Russian gold rush began. It wasn't long before Persson's method caught on around the world. In 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in California, and Russian teams even came out to teach the Americans how to pan for it.

So you could say that without the Russian gold rush, the American gold rush might never have happened. [Music]