[American in Israel]

Interesting theory. I noticed as a young man prospecting that there was a certain species of Ant in the Sierras that tended to have nests in gold deposits. I and my friends naturally started calling them “Gold Ants”. They looked like a standard Red Ant, but had a black body with a red section in the middle.

Always wondered at that coincidence. This is as close as I could find.

[muawiyah]

For a few thousand years after an event that spreads gold flour (microscopic gold particles) over an area, that gold is ON the surface. There's evidence that ancient Egyptians mined gold flour, and also that North American Indians did so ~ and probably for the same reason ~ a belief that it was the Sungod's sunlight.

There's no particular way of mining this stuff ~ it's very diffuse and consolidating it takes considerable time. Ancient Indian mounds in the midwest could be the clue to how they did it ~ for sure they are located in concentrations of the gold effluvia ejected when the hypothetical comet strike hit a residual ice sheet in Canada 12000 years ago.

A very simple gold concentration device would be the common D-handled shovel. Build a circular trench. Everyday bring a shovel full of surface dirt to the circle and toss it in the middle. Over time rainfall should worry any gold flour out of that shovelful of dirt.

This could go on for hundreds of years but think of the pocket change!

It might have been rather obvious that termites collected gold over in Egypt and up the Nile. There the termites build large mound nests. Set fire to one and sift the ashes.

In North America it would be less obvious unless you dug into a major termite nest in the ground and found a peculiar but comforting glint ~ so, just find termites and start piling up dirt. I suspect they toss the effluvia containing gold over the top.