Bartering, the direct exchange of one
commodity for another is the first system
of reference. For example : one sheep =
10 cockerels, etc. From then on the sheep
became a monetary unit and served as a
base value.
From Antiquity onwards, man as craftsman
used the object he made as a unit of currency
: axe-head, knife, metal ingot, pieces of
fabric, jewels, etc. These objects used as
coinage - called paleo-coinage - were numerous
and vary from one region to another, indeed
from one era to another.
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| Cowries,
African shell-money |
Cowrie shells :
In use in Africa right up to the
XIXth century as an instrument of exchange
and reserve of value enabling savings.
Piled
together and often pierced, they made counting
in commercial transactions
easier.
The first coins in
the West
:
In the West, metal coins appeared
around 650 BC with the Greeks in Asia Minor
(western coast of what is Turkey today).
Small
ingots of precious metal of constant weight
were made by the city whose symbol
they bore : the first coins in the sense
we understand today were thus born : they
had the same weight, same shape and bore
an identical mark.
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