So, can you name a "civilization" with a modern market economy and a hard currency? These days we have countries, nations, not civilizations;) You assume that a consistent increase in the supply of a commodity insures some consistency in the demand for that commodity, and you know what they say about assume...we old carpenters certainly do. I'm assuming that you know that China and Russia mine SEVEN times more gold than we do, that the U.S. mined a grand total of $9 billion dollars worth last year. U.S. GDP growth has been averaging about $1 trillion a year. or about 100 times the value of the gold we mine. Our GDP is over $20 trillion a year. Our gold stash, the biggest in the world, is worth about $269 billion, or in the range of 1/100 of our GDP. Are you seriously suggesting that we can back the M2 money supply of around $15 trillion with $269 billion of bullion? Do we go hat in hand to Russia and China and ask if we can buy all their gold? With what? Inquiring minds want to know;)