Currency How did money start, did you ever wonder? If I was a guessing person I would have to say objects became money first. For example, one caveman might have had an extra piece of meat and another an extra piece of fruit and they decided to do an exchange. The meat and the fruit became a sort of currency. We really don’t know, but we have noticed some very ancient beads and there is a chance beads could have been used as money. Native Americans took beads a step further using Wampum which were beads and it had many uses. Agreement by tribes was marked by belts made of Wampum. It was also used as money and for decorations. It is still used for certain purposes today. We really don’t know much about money before 5,000 B.C. We don’t even know for sure if it could have been around before that date, but we don’t think so. Maybe sea shells could have been used. Many shells have been found in ancient caves which had been occupied. It is said beads made from shells have been found which date back to an incredible 142,000 to 150,000 years and maybe they are not even the oldest. We might find some older ones someday. Maybe they were used as a form of exchange. It seems ancient humans liked shells very much. We have found many carved bones. The most ancient found so far were cattle bones which were carved and they date back to 120,000 years ago. Could these carved bones have been considered precious and could they have been as currency? We don’t know, but there is a chance we have looked at them in the wrong light, that is just as an artifact, when maybe we should have considered other uses for them. It is said the first time gold coins were minted was in 550 B.C. King Croesus of Lydia which today is currently known as Turkey ordered it. Other countries also accepted these coins as currency. Before gold coins existed however Egypt around 1,500 B.C. used it as currency. Egypt at the time had much of it. It is believed the first actual money was made of pieces of metals. There seems to have been a problem because there was no scale for the value of metal objects and that is why it is believed coins were invented. Their value was set because it was agreed upon. A lot of strange money appeared over the centuries. It was believed the earliest form of money in China was Cowry shells, but the emperor of China introduced a copper coin and did away with all other forms of currency in the 200s B.C. China was way ahead of the world on currency and introduced something which must have been thought of as very strange in ancient times, it was paper money in the 7th century. The copper coins were still considered the base currency of China at the time. Paper money didn’t appear in Europe until 1661 when Sweden introduced bank notes. Actually, it didn’t take long to appear here. It appeared in 1690 as bills of credit or IOUs. It is interesting to note the Vikings, before they started raiding didn’t have any set currency. If they happened to get coins they were used only for their value of precious metals. It is said even jewelry would be used as currency and was at times cut into smaller pieces. This was known as Hack silver and silver was the most common form of payment. This was said to change after they arrived in England. It is said the earliest civilizations such as Babylon had no currency. It was amazing they could exist on just a barter system. Some disagree and say they had currency and it was known as the shekel, but it was a unit of barley. I still call this a barter system. The same was true for Sumer. Salt has been used as currency for thousands of years. That is where the salary comes from. It is a Roman word meaning money used to buy salt. Sometimes Roman soldiers were paid with salt. Ancient Roman pay receipts have been found which indicated this. Salt was considered so valuable it was acceptable. Currency, even modern currency, can come in some very strange forms. When the Japanese occupied Manchuria they issued coins. They had a problem; they had no metal they could spare because they needed it for the war effort. What were they to do. They issued coins made from cardboard known as the Manchukuo Yuan. The Maya had no coins or actual currency, but they found they had something which held a lot of value and they used it in place of currency and it was the cocoa bean. The beans were on the rare side because the cocoa plant is a low yielding plant so they became very valuable and could be traded for many items. It is said when written history started, money already existed. One of the most important things about money is it can be accounted for and tallied. We know the value. Records can be kept. It must have been impossible to get a value of something before money was invented. China had some very strange money over the centuries. Around 600 B.C. they used knives as currency. This happened at the time of the Zhou dynasty. They had a value inscribed upon them. This was very strange indeed and was said to have started with the troops. Two hundred years later money in the shape of fish appeared. Let’s face it, anything people agree upon can become currency. Take the U.S. dollar for example. It used to have gold backing it, then later silver was used. You could go into a bank and ask for a silver dollar if you turned it in. That was also changed and today the dollar is just a piece of paper and yet we all agree on its value. In ancient China bricks made of compressed tea were used as currency at one time. They became accepted by other countries in the area and this even spread into Russia. The bricks were very popular. It is said that many objects for sale became priced in tea bricks. There are certain islands where rare types of rocks became currency.
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