Fools Gold

For thousands of years, alchemy was mainly concerned , in classical folklore, with two objectives. First, to change base metals, especially lead, into gold. Second, to discover an elixir of immortality or at least to live in the physical sense for many centuries. Over the many centuries there have been individuals who actually believed they could turn common metals into gold, but actually, they were very much mistaken. Iron pyrite is often found together with assorted sulfides or oxides in quartz veins, sedimentary rocks, metamorphic rocks, as well as in coal bed, and as a replacement mineral in certain fossils. If an alchemist was experimenting with boiling, heating, applying an acid solution over the rocks, quartz, coal, or fossil and happened to inadvertently free the iron pyrite; and the pyrite was not so noticeable to begin with, he could mistakenly think he caused gold particles to be created.