History of Money

History of Money

Money did not always exist in this world. Prior to the use of money, barter is the mode of business transactions. However, barter was found to be an inefficient way of exchanging goods. As a result, money acts as an intermediary market good, which may be paid for other goods. On the basis of history, money has taken myriad forms, as well as scarce metals. At present, the majority of money exchanged takes no physical shape or texture, and only exists as bytes and bits in a memory of computer.

Full standardisation arrived with coins, approximately 700 BC. The first printed money appeared in China, around 800 AD. The first relentless inflation was in the 11th century AD. The Mongols adapted the bank note system in the 13th century, which Marco Polo wrote about. The Mongol bank notes were “legal tender”, I.e. it was a capital offense to refuse them as payment. By the late 1400s, centuries of inflation create eliminated printed bank notes in China. They were reinvented in Europe in the wake 17th century. The lower image is of the Greek Drachma, which had a steady value from the 6th century BC to the 2nd century BC, and became standard coinage in much of Asia and Europe.

According to Max Mehl, money as a medium of exchange in barter and trade has always in all times found expression in some form or other from necessity thereof. In the remotest periods, before gold or silver were commonly in use, it took the form of animals, oxen, sheep, lambs, shells, etc. Thus we find used cattle in Germany, leather in Rome, sugar in the West Indies, shells in Siam, lead in Burma, platinum in Russia, tin in Great Britain, iron and nails in Scotland, brass in China, and finally copper, silver and gold the world over.

If we look up the sacred writings in quest of the earliest use of money quoted therein, we will find that the Bible mentions gold as a medium of value in the very first book of Moses which according to modern synchronology, would be about 4,000 years before the time of Christ, or almost 6,000 years ago. In Genesis Chapter 2 verses 10-12, it mentioned that “And a river went out of Eden, and the land of Haviliah where there is gold and the gold of that land is good”. Hence Adam and Eve could have found gold in Haviliah just the same as we do in the Yukon today. Tubal-Cain, son of Iamech, a descendant of Cain, apparently was the first man to shape metals into articles of use and probably our very first goldsmith and jeweler. Brass and silver was also mentioned in the bible as a form of money. The earliest mention of the word money occurs in GenesisChapter 17 verses 12, 13, and 23which mentioned that “He that is born in the house or bought with money”.

So we find that the ancient Hebrews and their gauge of value expressed by the shekel, and these shekels were weighed out, not counted. Apparently the early money did not have an equal weight as the ancient tombs of Egypt will show traces of scales engraved on their walls, suggesting the wealth of their owners as weighed in shekels and lambs, for lambs were really the principal article of barter among the Egyptians, and from this weighing originated the term shekel in coinage, shekel meaning in Hebrew to weigh. The Old Testament further enlightens us that the shekels were of three different metals, gold, silver and brass.

The actual coinage of money now being an accomplished and customary fact, it was furthered along by the Greek nations, who, after stamping thereon turtles, owls, images and other objects of their divinity, finally with Alexander the Great, began to impress upon their coins crude portraits or heads of living persons and rulers, leaving to us thereby no uncertain means of tracing their lineage from time to time, an indestructible evidence to posterity of their existence, their appearance, and their advancement. This method was kept up and improved upon by the Romans, who became proficient in the art, in consequence of which we have today an immense number of Roman coins and silver Denarii, preserved for centuries, serving as a complete record of the ruling families of the Caesars, established by a close study of the features and inscriptions impressed upon their coinage. After the decline and fall of the Roman empire, the coinage of money from an artistic standpoint began to deteriorate, and from the Byzantine period, beginning with Anastasius in the fourth century, until almost a thousand years later, money became crude in form and expression, unequal in shape or value, lacking design and execution, both Christian and Barbarian coins being in use, and there are but few well struck specimens left to us, which few are mostly gold.

The kinds of the ancient coins were more often than not religious. In an age of straightforward faith, the head of a god upon the coin was the best of all guarantees for purity of metal and good weight. The learning of ancient coins is one of the most appealing historic as well as artistic subjects. Some coins are today the only record extant of important events in the world’s history and the existence of cities and nations long since gone perpetually. The production of ancient coins, however, is very large, remaining to the large supply of these coins being regularly unearthed, and as an outcome an ancient coin from 1,500 to 2,500 years old may be purchased for a very small sum. Some of the most motivating and important ancient coins are represented in a mixture of engravings published in this book. The reproductions are from photographs of the original coins and are fully explained as to their metal, denomination, country, and others, by the explanation printed with each plate. This, then, is the account of money — how it came to be — what it is nowadays.