The Original Money Idea

Have you ever wonder where money come from? The following excert will englighten you a little about the value of money.

The concept of money started when the concept of bartering emerged. Bartering is the word we give to a system known as bartering. This involved exchanging goods rather than paying for them. Bartering was invented in Ancient Egypt around the time of Moses. It meant that, for instance, a bag of potatoes might be swapped for a tin of peaches, or a candle may be swapped for a brown shawl made out of potato sacking, or whatever it was they wore in those drab times. Legend has it that Marco Polo swapped his owls for a ship, without which he couldn’t have circumnavigated right around the world, in 987AD.

Money is basically an agreement between people. It is an agreement that this much of some kind of metal (usually gold, silver, or bronze) or paper will be worth this much bread, and this much cheese, and this many slaves.

The earliest metal coins came from China, where people used small pieces of bronze to trade things starting around 1500 BC.

Coins with guarantees were invented around 650 BC. This kind of coin is marked with a promise by somebody (often a government) that this coin is worth what it says it is worth. So you don’t have to weigh each coin before you accept it (if you trust that government).

The Romans invented paper money around 1000AD. When Emperor Claudius ran out of money, he wrote IOU notes, promising that he would pay 100,000 lira (that’s about 2 shillings) to his debtor. When Claudius fled to Spain around the time of Elija, he took the idea with him, and it was in Barcelona that the first true banknotes in the world were printed. To this day, Spanish notes carry the face of Claudius, who was known in those days as Miguel I.