History of Money - The Emergence of Money

The Emergence of Money

Anatolian obsidian as a raw material for stone-age tools was distributed as early as 12,000 B.C., with organized trade occurring in the 9th millennium.(Cauvin;Chataigner 1998) In Sardinia, one of the four main sites for sourcing the material deposits of obsidian within the Mediterranean, trade in this was replaced in the 3rd millennium by trade in copper and silver.

Both grain and cattle as money are known in use 9000 BC as two of the earliest things understood as available to barter (Davies)(the first grain remains found, considered to be evidence of pre-agricultural practice date to 17,000 BC). The importance of grain to value and money is true whereby in language there is, surviving the transition of the material of currency, the description of gold in a smaller state described as a "grain of gold".

In the ancient earlier instances of trade with some thing as money, the things with the most desirable; useful and their reliability in terms of the confidence a person would have had in the re-use and re-trading of these things (their marketability), decided in the minds of the prospective individuals concerned the nature of the object or thing chosen to exchange. So as in agricultural societies, all those things needed for efficient and comfortable employment of energies for the production of cereals and the like were the most easy to transfer to monetary significance, for direct exchange. As more of the basic conditions of the human existence were met to the satisfaction of human needs, so the division of labour increased to create new activities for the use of time to solve more advanced concerns. As peoples needs became more refined, so indirect exchange becomes more likely as the physical separation of skilled labourers (suppliers) from their prospective clients (demand) required the use of a medium common to all communities, to facilitate a wider market.

Aristotle's opinion of the creation of money as a new thing in society is :

When the inhabitants of one country became more dependent on those of another, and they imported what they needed, and exported what they had too much of, money necessarily came into use.

The worship of Moneta is recorded by Livy with the temple built in the time of Rome 413 (123); a temple consecrated to the same god was built in the earlier part of the fourth century (perhaps the same temple). The temple contained the mint of Rome for a period of four centuries.