The protohuman noticed a shiny stone in the creek bed he was wading through on his daily search for the good-tasting small creatures that lived under rocks in the stream. He picked up the shiny because it was different.

Returned to the trees his tribe lived in, he saw the female he wanted as a mate. She was with another male, his competitor, for her favors.

He approached her with the shiny rock in hand. A ray of sunlight reflected off of it catching her attention. He held it out to her, and she took it gently from his hand. She turned her back on his competitor, and she was his for life.

Many years passed, and the protohumans were long gone, the trees they lived in but a memory.

The shiny rock lay on the ground, waiting.

The next being to notice had a sloped forehead and an overhanging jaw. It was attracted by a glint of sunlight off the nugget.

Picking it up, he returned to his cave and gave it to his oldest girlchild to play with. A great-granddaughter took it when leaving the cave to be with one of the different people. They walked straighter and had smoother features.

More importantly, they seemed to have more food which they grew from the ground. The nugget passed down the family for many generations until a raiding tribe killed all of the family.

The stone lay on the ground, waiting.

A nomad trying to get comfortable for his night’s sleep felt a sharp rock under his back. He dug it out and noticed it was different. He kept it and showed it to his tribe’s shaman. The shaman asked for the stone. It looked like it had powers.

The shaman kept it in his magic bag, and it was passed down from shaman to shaman. One winter, the food was scarce, and the nomads starved to death. The stone lay in the shaman’s bag until the bag rotted.

It lay on the ground, waiting.

A Roman legionnaire saw the nugget lying on the ground and recognized it as gold. He picked it up and hid it quickly; this would buy him a farm when he retired.

The legionnaire was killed in battle with the Visigoths before he could retire. The Romans won the battle. His fellow legionnaires searched his body. The nugget was seized by a centurion and disappeared.

The centurion traded the nugget for a promotion, which was the way of the Roman army at the time. The nugget ended up in the Emperor’s mint, where it was cast into a gold coin.

The coin passed through many hands in the next several hundred years. The Roman Empire fell, but the gold coin continued its journey. It was plundered by pirates and lost in dice games; it never stopped moving.

The coin was in the hands of a noble of the newly formed Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Holy, Roman or an Empire. The noble had the coin included in the casting of a pair of candlesticks.