Who invented money?
The history of money is the story of an evolution from barter to coins, bills, and, finally, completely intangible units of exchange. The driving force behind these changes was the need for enough money to support increased production and prosperity. If the economy of a particular region were to grow consistently, it would require increasingly more money as time goes by. Moreover, the more intangible the form of money, the more the money supply could be controlled. In a few moments, I’ll show you why this is so important. First, though, let’s consider how money evolved from pieces of gold and silver into our modern currency. The first coins were minted between 640 and 630 BC in the Kingdom of Lydia, a region in west-central Asia Minor on the Aegean Sea, lying within modern-day Turkey. The Lydian kings created small pieces of metal with a standardized size and weight. These pieces of metal were then stamped with an emblem that verified their worth. At first, the Lydians made their coins
Up until 1500 BC all money was cattle, lambs, goats or pigs live money that was real life-support wealth, wealth you could actually eat. Steers were by far the biggest food animal and so they were the highest denomination of money. The Phoenicians carried their cattle with them for trading but these big creatures proved to very cumbersome on long voyages. This was the time when Crete was the headquarters of the big-boat people and their new supreme weapon the lines-of-supply-control ship. Crete was called the Minoan civilization, the bull civilization, worshippers of the male fertility god. The pair of joined bulls horns symbolized that the particular ship carried real-wealth traders that there were cattle on board to be exchanged for local-wealth items Graduating from carrying cattle along for trading in 1500 BC, the Phoenicians invented metal money, which they first formed into iron half-rings that looked like a pair of bulls horns. (Many today mistake them for bracelets.) Soon the t
The first piece of metal to be considered a coin was invented in Lydia, Turkey, in 670 B.C. However, the idea of money took place long time ago. People traded a basket of berries with six ears of corn, a cow in exchange of ten chickens. However, what if the person with berries wanted wheat instead of corn? Eventually, it made sense to have something that always had the same value and was easy to carry. In addition, this gave result to what we use now – money.
The still do steal – money did not stop that. Otherwise, yes, it is generally assumed that barter, of some kind, pre-dated that. The term ‘money’ itself comes Roman heritage; but the idea of using standard token goods (such as precious metals, rare sea shells, or cocoa beans, or any other rare but highly sought after and durable commodity) as a reference value by which to value other items of desire is as old as civilisation, ans was used from the Middle East to Meso-America, or even amongst the tribes of North America when the Europeans first arrived there. This is not money in the sense that it is not a State controlled, or State guaranteed unit of value, but it was a tradeable commodity that could be used to buy things. Even in more modern times, when there was a breakdown in confidence in the national currency (such as in mainland Europe in the aftermath of WWII) people would revert to token commodities (such as the use of cigarettes as a unit of currency after WWII).
