IOW "The wealthy were able to migrate to safer places and restart their lives more easily."
No surprise there. So it was their wealth, not gold per se, that made their move safer and restarting easier.
Gold is the most useless element in the world. But greed has no bounds and the love of men for gold seems endless.
If you're wealthy but cannot easily carry said wealth with you across borders or conflict lines or hide it from a kleptocratic Government then there's not that much that you can do.
Case in point, the high middle classes from my Eastern-European country, who after WW2 were wiped clean by the Government in just a couple of years, the result of industry and real estate nationalizations, combined with a forced revaluation of paper money. Holding gold could have protected one against all this, at least partially.
Out of all the naturally occurring elements, proactinium probably takes the "most useless" prize - it's used by scientists doing radiometric dating. And it's both toxic and radioactive.
Gold is still important and will remain important as long as people consider it to be value of last resort for bartering or exchanging product and services. What good is the skill if you can't exchange it for more important things you need for survival? Generally in economics, capital (gold) is always considered more valuable than labor (skill).