I think there's something to be said about gold's utility as money. It's remarkably good at being money compared to other materials. It's easy to store, identify, divide, it's fungible, and it's scarce enough. If civilization were to collapse, I think that there's a fair chance that we'd be using gold and other precious metals as money again, whether or not it was used in the past.
I'm not sure I believe that. If civilization were to collapse, you'd want food, medicine, potentially gas. Potentially solar cells, and some other things.
I think you'd see more traditional bartering than money being introduced again in its earliest stages.
The problem with bartering is that useful but rare products are a poor store of value because peot need to use those things. Useless but rare things are better as money, as long a users are confident that there is economic growth to spend money on (decoupling consumption from production)