 The first European reference to platinum appears in 1557 in the writings of the Italian humanist Julius Caesar Scaliger as a description of an unknown noble metal found between Darién and Mexico , " which no fire nor any Spanish artifice has yet been able to liquefy " . From their first encounters with platinum , the Spanish generally saw the metal as a kind of impurity in gold , and it was treated as such . It was often simply thrown away , and there was an official decree forbidding the adulteration of gold with platinum impurities . 
