The history of money begins around 2500 years ago with the first minting of coinage in about the seventh to sixth century BC. Money is any clearly identifiable object of value that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts within a market or which is legal tender within a country.
Since ancient times people have swapped items of value either in the exchange of gifts or else in markets where a commonly shared system of tokens is more convenient.
Many things have been exchanged in markets including, for example, livestock and sacks of cereal grain (from which the Shekel is derived) - things directly useful in themselves, but also sometimes merely attractive items such as cowry shells or beads were exchanged for more useful commodities. Precious metals from which early coins were made, fall into this second category.
Numismatics is the scientific study of money and its history in all its varied forms.
Read more about History Of Money: The Emergence of Money, Commodity Money, Trade Bills of Exchange, Tallies, Goldsmith Bankers, Demand Deposits, Banknotes, Fiat Money
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or money:
“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)