Why is gold considered so precious and why does it have such high prices?

I have spent a decade intricately studying gold. As a concept,  It has been one of the most difficult ones to wrap my mind around and I have studied and/or contributed to quora (under pseudonym) on a multitude of disciplines from quantum physics to complex/esoteric finance to latin philosophy and behavioral economics. 

Over the years I have been able to distill gold's importance by combining a few themes: Physics, Anthropology, Kin altruism, and social progress. My close friend and business partner Josh Crumb and I refined these ideas over the last 6 years since the financial crisis of 2008. Josh's background is in physics, engineering, and economics. He spent his career extracting commodities and analyzing their effects on macroeconomics. This is the best of what we have:

What is so special about Gold? Why Gold? 

By reexamining the elemental properties of gold, it becomes clear that gold provides a globally neutral, natural unit of account in relation to all other elements required by humans. The scientific properties of gold in our natural and human systems reconciled independently over thousands of years. We ask you to consider an alternative view of gold's usefulness, one absent the emotive politics of money, fear and greed.

Elements, Oxygen, Time

• Everything known to exist in the universe, on this planet, and even life itself can be broken down to 92 naturally-occurring elements, the basic building blocks of everything.
• The elements, or combinations of elements (compounds) most desired by humans become known as natural resources, or natural resource commodities. All industry on planet earth, from farming to manufacturing to technology is inextricably linked to the consumption of these resources; agricultural, fishing and forestry products, hydrocarbon energy sources, and metals.
• Oxygen is the third most abundant element and enables life, but also reacts with many of the compounds we require, eventually destroying these resources through cycles. Over time, oxygen causes nearly every commodity to rot, tarnish, rust, or oxidize, establishing an expiration date or finite life for most of the things we consume.

The finite life of most compounds means that we cannot save what we need to survive beyond a limited period of time.

Gold - The Rarest, Immortal Commodity

• Of the 92 naturally occurring elements, eight are known as the "noble metals". The elemental particles making up these eight elements are organized in a manner that makes them unreactive with air, or "immortal" as pure elements. Put differently, the oxygen, carbon dioxide, and gases that make up our air have no tarnishing effect on these elements through the life cycles of humans.
• Of the eight noble metals, only four became broadly employed as commodities: gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. Of the four, gold is the rarest on earth and visually discernible due to its color and purity.
• In day to day life gold is rarely preferred over other basic elements or immediately necessary commodities. Grains are more useful as food, energy sources for heat and transport, industrial metals for shelter, tools, and to distribute electricity and data.
• None of these daily commodities last over long periods of time in their most useful form however; they are costly to store, costly to transport, or costly to reconfigure if they can be re-purposed.
• These perishable compounds and commodities do not last throughout the life of an individual either; a younger, physically able person cannot save the essential commodity surpluses for later and less able years.

Therefore, the storage and movement of the basic elements we need requires cooperation, and gold has been an important part of this cooperation throughout history. I will explain how, but first we need to know a little about its cost and value.