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If you think people become more prosperous with time, progress, and technological innovation, the list of the wealthiest people of all time may prove you wrong. Money has derived demand, and it is more complicated as a concept than we give it credit. But more importantly, the value of money is not fixed. It keeps changing with economic growth and slack, inflation, and deflation. The value of money is often in relative terms when it comes to comparing currencies.
In that case, it becomes increasingly difficult to decide who was the wealthiest person of all time since the beginning of civilization. The following list justifies the wealthiest people of all time by adjusting the figures in the relative terms of post-inflation modern money.
Alan Rufus - $178 billion
Alan Rufus, or Alan, the Red, was the nephew of William, the conqueror. He had accompanied his uncle in the famous Norman Conquest. He, too, amassed and left behind an insane amount of wealth.
Being his uncle's supporter in the Nirman conquest turned out to be lucrative for Alan Rufus as he acquired about 250,000 acres of land. His worth in terms of modern money would stand somewhere around $178 billion.
William The Conqueror - $229 billion
William, the Conqueror, is the oldest billionaire on this list. He lived from 1028-1087. He was called so because of his well-known conquering of England back in 1066. In the process of invading and conquering various lands, he accumulated an immense amount of wealth.
William, the conqueror, had a notorious reputation as he was also called William, the bastard. But he had left behind assets and riches to his descendants worth about $229 billion as per the current valuation.
Mir Osman Ali Khan - $230 billion
Mir Osman Ali had been the Nizam of Hyderabad until it was invaded and taken from him. Merely the gold in this ruler's wealth amounted to a massive $100 million. Plus, he also owned enough jewels to offer a value of about $400 million.
The well-known Jacob diamond alone is worth about $90 million today. Oddly enough, Osman Ali Khan used the Jacob Diamond merely as a paperweight. It comes as no surprise that in modern dollar value, his worth was about $230 billion.
John D. Rockefeller - $341 billion
Rockefeller is a typical American reference point for ruches because he is considered the wealthiest American that ever lived. Rockefeller began his career as an investor in 1863 by putting his money into the petroleum industry. By 1880 he found the Standard Oil industry, which would control 90 percent of the USA's oil production.
His net worth was $1.5 billion, which in terms of modern money is about $341 billion. Americans are familiar with companies like Amoco, Exxon Mobil, and so on, but these were only small entities whose parent company was Standard Oil.
Andrew Carnegie - $372 billion
Andrew Carnegie is one of the most charitable billionaires on this list. He sold off his company, Carnegie Steel Company, for about $480 million to JP Morgan. Among other riches, he got in return was about $230 million worth of gold bonds which he put to rest for years in a New Jersey bank.
Carnegie then began his life of charity and never visited this bank. His net worth was about $372 billion, according to current money rates.
Carnegie once said, "The man who dies rich dies disgraced." While he didn't exactly die a billionaire, giving away massive swaths of his wealth to more than 3,500 public libraries, the Carnegie net worth at his richest was valued in today's dollars between $300 and $372 billion."
Mansa Musa I - $400 billion
Mansa Musa was the emperor of Timbuktu, and his west African empire was the largest producer of gold when the demand for gold was too high. Mansa Musa lived from 1200 to 1337, and his reign was over Timbuktu, Ghana, and Mali.
Although it is difficult to know his worth in terms of current USD, it is estimated to be around $400 billion. Mansa Musa built his legacy by building timeless mosques and monuments, but unfortunately, his heirs could not live up to this legacy.
Augustus Caesar- $4.6 trillion
Augustus Caesar is famous in the world even today as the first emperor of Rome. But he was also one of the wealthiest people of all time. His Roman empire had an estimated worth of $4.6 trillion.
For quite some time, he owned Egypt's entirety and thus was in direct control of the wealth his reign had accumulated. When his empire's economic output was the equivalent of 30 percent of the world's gross domestic product, he owned about a fifth of the world's total wealth then.
Today Jeff Bezos, the founder, and CEO of Amazon, is the wealthiest living person on the planet. He owns only 17 percent of Amazon and still has a whopping net worth of $170 billion. Next on this list is Microsoft's co-founder, Bill Gates, with an impressive net worth of $149 billion.
The difference in the valuation of the wealthiest people from world history compared to the present world is mostly due to the changing economies. It is still fascinating to know how much wealth a single individual could acquire at one point in history.
Source: Celebrity Net Worth, Title Max, Life Beyond Sport