It is impossible to recognize the exact day that human beings very first began to extract gold, but some of the oldest known gold artifacts were found in the Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria.

The graves of the necropolis were built between 4700 and 4200 BC, showing that gold mining could be a minimum of 7000 years old. A group of Georgian and german excavators declares the Sakdrisi website in southerly Georgia, dating to the 3rd or 4th millennium BC, might be the world's oldest known gold mine.

Romans utilized hydraulic mining techniques, such as hushing and ground sluicing on a big scale to extract gold from extensive alluvial deposits, such as those at Las Medulas.