who discovered silver

Silver was not discovered by a single individual. It has been known and used since prehistoric times, with evidence showing silver was first mined around 3000 BCE in Anatolia, which is modern-day Turkey. Early civilizations, such as those in the Near East, Ancient Greece, and later in the Roman Empire, extracted and used silver for various purposes including currency and jewelry. The method of extracting silver from ores, especially by cupellation (separating silver from lead), was developed very early and widely practiced in regions like the Aegean Sea area by 4000 BCE. The name "silver" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "seolfor," and its chemical symbol Ag is derived from the Latin "argentum," connected to the Sanskrit word for shining. The widespread mining and use of silver dramatically expanded after the European discovery of the Americas in 1492, when Spanish conquerors began exploiting vast silver deposits in Central and South America, greatly boosting global silver production.