system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: At what point in mankind's history did humans started valuing Gold, Silver and other precious stones as valuable and started exchanging them for commodities

I mean we can't eat or drink these metals. Who or at what stage in humankind decided that these things are valuable and can be traded for food, clothing and other essential human needs.
gpt
Gold is shiny and pleasantly colored. It's also very easily melted and worked, is durable, is non-toxic, doesn't rust...Perfect jewelry making material for stone-age gatherers, really.

So what you had was some stone age people making jewelry with it but not enough easily accessible gold to go around. So only the chieftain and maybe a couple of favored women or hunters got jewelry made of gold, everyone else used bone or wood that went bad quickly.

It then became a status symbol (probably the first one, really) of the powerful. This 'stuck' until the present day because gold is still rather rare.

Interestingly, some locations (like certain central American mountains) had so much gold it was never rare and thus was considered pretty but useless. Until the Spaniards came over and saw all that lovely gold just sitting there (on people) for the taking.