According to Zecharia Sitchin's interpretation of Mesopotamian iconography and symbology, outlined in his 1976 book The 12th Planet, and its sequels, there is an undiscovered planet beyond Neptune that follows a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system roughly every 3,600 years. This planet is called Nibiru associated with the god Marduk in Babylonian cosmology.

Nibiru (called "the twelfth planet" because, Sitchin claimed, the Sumerians' gods-given conception of the Solar System counted all eight planets, plus Pluto, the Sun and the Moon) was the home of a technologically advanced human-like extraterrestrial race called the Anunnaki in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the Nephilim in Genesis.

He wrote that they evolved after Nibiru entered the solar system and first arrived on Earth probably 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, which they found and mined in Africa. Sitchin states that these "gods" were the rank-and-file workers of the colonial expedition to Earth from planet Nibiru. Enki suggested that to relieve the Anunnaki, who had mutinied over their dissatisfaction with their working conditions, that primitive workers (Homo sapiens) be created by genetic engineering as slaves to replace them in the gold mines by crossing extraterrestrial genes with those of Homo erectus.

There are those who believe Nibiru will soon be seen in the sky and the ancient gods will return for more gold. I take it all to be a metaphor for the alchemy of consciousness evolving now out of physical time and back to light. This also references reality as a biogenetic experiment set in linear time to study emotions. It had a beginning and is now coming to its end.

You might wonder about ancient aliens visiting Earth for gold and the articles below about that say that gold came from space. Is there a metaphor here? What is the link with gold and ancient aliens?

Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. In pseudoscience the number 11 refers to our consciousness reality and twin spiral human DNA. In today's world why is the price of gold going up as everything else in the economy is crashing?

Asteroids May Have Brought Precious Metals to Earth   Live Science - September 7, 2011

The precious metals that we see on Earth today may be largely heavenly in nature, coming from the sky billions of years ago, scientists now find. Back when the Earth was just forming, the materials that make up the planet were combining and differentiating into layers by weight - lighter materials floated to the surface and now make up Earth's crust, while heavier materials such as iron sank to the planet's interior.

Where does all the gold come from?   PhysOrg - September 7, 2011

Ultra high precision analyses of some of the oldest rock samples on Earth by researchers at the University of Bristol provides clear evidence that the planet's accessible reserves of precious metals are the result of a bombardment of meteorites more than 200 million years after the Earth was formed. During the formation of the Earth, molten iron sank to its centre to make the core. This took with it the vast majority of the planet's precious metals Ð such as gold and platinum. In fact, there are enough precious metals in the core to cover the entire surface of the Earth with a four metre thick layer. The removal of gold to the core should leave the outer portion of the Earth bereft of bling. However, precious metals are tens to thousands of times more abundant in the Earth's silicate mantle than anticipated. It has previously been argued that this serendipitous over-abundance results from a cataclysmic meteorite shower that hit the Earth after the core formed. The full load of meteorite gold was thus added to the mantle alone and not lost to the deep interior.