home > Solitaire Mat > Who invented money and why? History of money from antiquity to the present day Why did man create money?

Who invented money and why? History of money from antiquity to the present day Why did man create money?

On September 19, 2012, a local currency was introduced into circulation in the UK.
The circulation of the currency is limited to the city of Bristol, after which the local pound is named; people have already dubbed it “Bristolik”. This experiment is being conducted to support small businesses.
The fact is that due to the protracted crisis, the purchasing power of the population has fallen even in such a rich country as Great Britain. The Bristol pound can be obtained by exchanging it at a bank at a rate of 1:1 in relation to the pound sterling. When performing a reverse transaction, a 3% tax will be charged.

How can introducing a local currency revitalize the economy? Let's figure it out together. What is money, when and how did it appear?
Money originated in China during the Shang Dynasty, which ruled from 1600 to 1027 BC. Issued on September 18, 2012 by the People's Bank of China gold coin in honor of the first Chinese state.

During the Shang Dynasty, centralization of power began in China, the ruler was the king, he was the nominal owner of all the land of the state.
There were clerks and archivists at the court. The royal power relied on the nobility, warriors and clergy. Ritual services were held in temples.
What happened in China before 3,600 years ago, no reliable written sources have been found to date.
It is assumed that various tribes lived on the territory of China, subsisting on crafts and natural exchange. How could the tribes unite, how did the monetary form of payment appear? Scientists say that a need simply arose, they just got together and came up with money for themselves. Let's try to imagine the average person of that time. He fishes, picks berries, raises livestock, makes household items...
Introduced? Now imagine that he so simply exchanged it for some items that were of no value to him, because before that there was no money at all! Natural exchange is understandable, a man exchanged his fish for vegetables, for clothes, a shovel... But why does he need pieces of bronze, what, carry these pieces of iron with him? It was only later that money with holes appeared, for ease of carrying, and then they were cast coins, similar to the one shown in the picture.

How to wear them and why such a bizarre shape, does it look like the head of a cow or ram? Surely taxes were introduced in the emerging state, but how to maintain the administrative apparatus, the king? And of course, they were initially collected in kind. Some will take fish, some clothes, some cattle, and this includes food and skins - they can be used for clothing. Surely the standard of tax was cattle, but why not take half of a cow? This coin really looks like a cow's head. By the way, such coins were in use until the 3rd century BC.
But how can you force a person to pay taxes? After all, he himself won’t pay it voluntarily, why is this all of a sudden, none of his ancestors paid anything. Here we remember the time of perestroika and the beginning of the 90s of the last century. Do you remember how a person came to a cooperator (artisan) offering security and when he did not agree, the next day hooligans came and caused damage, the cooperator himself turned to the “security structure”?
How can you track whether the tax has been paid or not, since paper was invented in China fifteen hundred years later? Signs? Well, this is China, there were a lot of them there even then. Cars with signs are difficult to take into account and control.
So they came up with tokens - coins. The coins are easy to carry and can also be exchanged. This is how one of the modern functions of money appeared - a measure of value.
The tax inspector (publican) gave one coin in exchange for a large horned animal, the same thing happened when exchanging 3 goats, 3 bags of fish, etc. Of course, there were cunning people; they immediately laid down such a loophole with deception. However, little has changed since then.
Over time, it became fashionable to show how much you paid in taxes, which means you are a rich person. We started exchanging and collecting these tokens. The function of modern money has appeared - accumulation. If people understood that by accepting a coin or bill from anyone, they doom themselves to be tied to the one who produced it. After all, it will be necessary to change them back, and this is how people drive themselves into slavery, dependence on paying taxes.
The further this epic continued, the more money was introduced into circulation. The money supply began to far exceed the quantity of goods produced. The goods deteriorate, and there are practically no coins. This is how inflation appeared. Then they began to lend money at interest, thereby further depreciating the value of the goods. After all, you took one coin, but you need to return 2. This is such nonsense.
I wonder who came up with all this and for what purposes? But you can read about this and much more in Anastasia Novykh’s unique books. It describes not only how the world works, but also how to bypass the traps cunningly placed on every corner, and, of course, about those who set these traps and why. You can download books completely free of charge (spiritual knowledge is given only for free) in the corresponding section of our website. And you can read the fragment right here, see the excerpt below.

The circulation of the currency is limited to the city of Bristol, after which the local pound is named; people have already dubbed it “Bristolik”. This experiment is being conducted to support small businesses. The fact is that due to the protracted crisis, the purchasing power of the population has fallen even in such a rich country as Great Britain. The Bristol pound can be obtained by exchanging it at a bank at a rate of 1:1 in relation to the pound sterling. When performing a reverse transaction, a 3% tax will be charged.

Money originated in China during the Shang Dynasty, which ruled from 1600 to 1027 BC. On September 18, 2012, the People's Bank of China issued a gold coin in honor of the first Chinese state.

During the Shang Dynasty, centralization of power began in China, the ruler was the king, he was the nominal owner of all the land of the state. There were clerks and archivists at the court. The royal power relied on the nobility, warriors and clergy. Ritual services were held in temples.

What happened in China before 3,600 years ago, no reliable written sources have been found to date. It is assumed that various tribes lived on the territory of China, subsisting on crafts and natural exchange. How could the tribes unite, how did the monetary form of payment appear? Scientists say that a need simply arose, they just got together and came up with money for themselves. Let's try to imagine the average person of that time. He fishes, picks berries, raises livestock, makes household items... Can you imagine? Now imagine that he so simply exchanged it for some items that were of no value to him, because before that there was no money at all! Natural exchange is understandable, a man exchanged his fish for vegetables, for clothes, a shovel... But why does he need pieces of bronze, what, carry these pieces of iron with him? It was only later that money with holes appeared, for ease of carrying, and then they were cast coins, similar to the one shown in the picture.

But how can you force a person to pay taxes? After all, he himself won’t pay it voluntarily, why is this all of a sudden, none of his ancestors paid anything. Here we remember the time of perestroika and the beginning of the 90s of the last century. Do you remember how a person came to a cooperator (artisan) offering security and when he did not agree, the next day hooligans came and caused damage, the cooperator himself turned to the “security structure”?

How can you track whether the tax has been paid or not, since paper was invented in China fifteen hundred years later? Signs? Well, this is China, there were a lot of them there even then. Cars with signs are difficult to take into account and control. So they came up with tokens - coins. The coins are easy to carry and can also be exchanged. This is how one of the modern functions of money appeared - a measure of value. The tax inspector (publican) gave one coin in exchange for a large horned animal, the same thing happened when exchanging 3 goats, 3 bags of fish, etc. Of course, there were cunning people; they immediately laid down such a loophole with deception. However, little has changed since then.

Over time, it became fashionable to show how much you paid in taxes, which means you are a rich person. We started exchanging and collecting these tokens. The function of modern money has appeared - accumulation. If people understood that by accepting a coin or bill from anyone, they doom themselves to be tied to the one who produced it. After all, it will be necessary to change them back, and this is how people drive themselves into slavery, dependence on paying taxes.

The further this epic continued, the more money was introduced into circulation. The money supply began to far exceed the quantity of goods produced. The goods deteriorate, and there are practically no coins. This is how inflation appeared. Then they began to lend money at interest, thereby further depreciating the value of the goods. After all, you took one coin, but you need to return 2. This is such nonsense.

Throughout the history of mankind, everything has served him as money: from cow skulls in Borneo to human skulls in the Solomon Islands, from bars of salt in Africa to tile tea in China and Burma. In Ancient Mexico, payments were generally made using cocoa beans. But what’s most interesting is that even in those days there were “counterfeiters” counterfeiting beans. People have tried everything as a means of payment: tobacco, grains of rice, corn, dried fish, skins, livestock, people.

Money changed, but the attitude towards money remained the same...Basically, nothing has changed now.

The fact is that due to the protracted crisis, the purchasing power of the population has fallen even in such a rich country as Great Britain. The Bristol pound can be obtained by exchanging it at a bank at a rate of 1:1 in relation to the pound sterling. When performing a reverse transaction, a 3% tax will be charged.

How can introducing a local currency revitalize the economy? Let's figure it out together. What is money, when and how did it appear?

Money originated in China during the Shang Dynasty, which ruled from 1600 to 1027 BC. On September 18, 2012, the People's Bank of China issued a gold coin in honor of the first Chinese state.

What happened in China before 3,600 years ago, no reliable written sources have been found to date.

It is assumed that various tribes lived on the territory of China, subsisting on crafts and natural exchange. How could the tribes unite, how did the monetary form of payment appear? Scientists say that a need simply arose, they just got together and came up with money for themselves.Let's try to imagine the average person of that time. He fishes, picks berries, raises livestock, makes household items...

Introduced? Now imagine that he so simply exchanged it for some items that were of no value to him, because before that there was no money at all! Natural exchange is understandable, a man exchanged his fish for vegetables, for clothes, a shovel... But why does he need pieces of bronze, what, carry these pieces of iron with him? It was only later that money with holes appeared, for ease of carrying, and then they were cast coins, similar to the one shown in the picture.

So they came up with tokens - coins. The coins are easy to carry and can also be exchanged. This is how one of the modern functions of money appeared - a measure of value.

The tax inspector (publican) gave one coin in exchange for a large horned animal, the same thing happened when exchanging 3 goats, 3 bags of fish, etc. Of course, there were cunning people; they immediately laid down such a loophole with deception. However, little has changed since then.

I wonder who came up with all this and for what purposes? But you can read about this and much more in Anastasia Novykh’s unique books. It describes not only how the world works, but also how to bypass the traps cunningly placed on every corner, and, of course, about those who set these traps and why. You can download books completely free of charge (spiritual knowledge is given only for free) in the corresponding section of our website. And you can read the fragment right here, see the excerpt below.

Evolutionary origins of money

This approach involves a transition to money for objective reasons, including: division of labor, property isolation of producers, economic growth, the need to maintain a fair exchange equivalent.

To understand why money was invented, it is worth considering its main functions.

Functions of money

Measure of value. This is the main function of money; it is the universal equivalent of the cost of a service or produced product. To compare different goods, it is enough to reduce their cost to the same monetary units - a single scale.

Means of circulation. Money significantly facilitates payments between producers - with the advent of coins, and then banknotes, the exchange of goods became much easier. If earlier purchase and sale necessarily coincided in time, now, thanks to the emergence of an intermediary - money, there is no need to simultaneously exchange goods for goods and interrupt the production process.

A means of storage. Being the equivalent of any commodity, money can accumulate, creating savings. There is no need to create storage facilities for goods; it is enough to put their equivalent in a jar or small container. It is money that allows a person to create wealth. Cash reserves smooth out the unevenness of economic life, which leads to stability.

Instrument of payment. Money can bring money, this is what the work of credit institutions is based on. This feature allows you to borrow without having to pay it off here and now, giving a promissory note.

So, money allows you to conduct trade and exchange, exchange your labor for any product, receiving a fair reward. They allow you to compare the value of different things. Money also allows you to create a certain reserve and, finally, allows you to take goods without paying all of its cost at once. That is why their appearance became an objective necessity at a certain stage in the development of society.

The history of money is very interesting. The first money arose in ancient times, and has survived to this day, but in a completely different form. Wars, revolutions, changes of governments and overthrow of kings occurred because of money. Are they the engine of history? Or is their role limited only to purchasing power? To answer these questions, we will learn the history of the emergence of money, the path of its evolution and the history of its spread throughout the world.

Ancient times

History of money originates from the time of the existence of ancient tribes. But the money of those times was significantly different from the money of today. It was more likely not money, but a means of exchange. So, for example, in pastoral tribes money was cattle, in Pomeranian settlements money was fish, which was exchanged for bread and meat so necessary for the tribe. It is known that different nations had their own objects that served them as money:

In Mexico, cocoa beans were money;

In Canada, Alaska and Siberia, ancient ancestors used the skins of valuable animals as money;

Among some tribes of South America and on the islands of Oceania, seashells or pearls were money;

The tribes of New Zealand used stones with a hole in the middle instead of money.

In some places grain or salt served as money. The use of commodity money made it possible to exchange it with other tribes or use it for its intended purpose in one’s own household. But they were extremely inconvenient to use. Therefore, there was a need for another, more practical form of payment.

Cowries. Photo from shells-of-aquarius.com

The Afars, a warlike tribe inhabiting the Danakil Desert in northeastern Ethiopia, have a legend that their land was once extremely rich in gold. The Afars, basking in luxury, became arrogant and angered God. All their gold turned to salt, and the tribe instantly became poor. To this day it lives from hand to mouth, wandering with its skinny cattle through the meager pastures of Danakil. But the Afars believe that sooner or later they will atone for their guilt and God will turn salt into gold again.

However, salt turned out to be not much worse than gold: everyone needs it and is always in price, that is, it is liquid; can be stored for as long as desired without losing essential properties; easily divided (exchanged). So for the Afars, for a whole millennium (until the twentieth century), salt became the main means of exchange. For example, an Afar who raises sheep wants to buy milk from his neighbor who raises cows. However, the sheep have not yet had time to grow wool, so barter is impossible. He exchanges the milk for salt and is all the more pleased that, unlike milk, it will not turn sour and he can put it aside in reserve.

Salt is not a conventional commodity, unlike money, but a consumed one, so it is not yet a monetary system in the classical sense. But this is no longer a completely natural exchange, since merchants can accept salt not only as a product, but also to preserve wealth (vegetables will rot, meat will rot, but nothing will happen to the salt), and for subsequent use as a means of payment.

Gold has two important advantages over salt, both stemming from its rarity. First, it delivers the same value in a much smaller package, making it much more portable. Secondly, the risk that a new huge source of gold will be discovered (deposit or import) and its value will sharply decrease is much lower.

Food as currency

In the ancient agricultural societies of Mesopotamia, three millennia BC, barley was the most important commodity. The smallest "unit of change" was shekel- 180 barley grains (usually about 11 grams). Shekels of barley could express the value of any good or service.

Over time, the shekel became a universal measure of weight; it was used, in particular, to measure silver. In the laws of the Babylonian king Hammurabi (circa 18th century BC), the oldest surviving set of written laws, fines were specified in shekels of silver. The value of barley was highly dependent on the harvest, so silver was a much more stable "currency".

In feudal Japan until the 19th century, the main, so to speak, unit of wealth was koku- the amount of rice that can feed an adult for a year (about 278 liters, or about 150 kilograms). If a landowner was said to have 30 thousand koku, this did not mean that he had that much rice. It was the total value of all his assets - productive land, livestock, labor, reduced to the most understandable unit of measurement. Koku measured the wealth of even those estates where rice was not grown at all.

Among the nomads of the Eurasian steppes, cattle played the role of a universal equivalent: with its help they paid taxes and penalties, bought brides, and exchanged bread, tar, high-quality weapons and other necessary goods with sedentary neighbors.

All of these “natural currencies” had a common problem: they were extremely volatile, that is, their value relative to other goods fluctuated greatly throughout the year and depended on many natural factors (crop could be destroyed by rain or drought, livestock could die). In this sense, minerals were much more reliable. Gold and silver turned out to be ideal: they are quite common and at the same time quite rare, they do not corrode, do not oxidize, and are easy to recognize. For small transactions, copper was most often used: it is also quite chemically stable and widespread on all continents. From the use of metals as “natural currencies” by weight (in the form of sand or bars) there was one step left to coinage.

Slaves and shells

But the most famous example of commodity money is, of course, cowrie shells. They had two important advantages. Firstly, they are almost impossible to fake. Secondly, huge margins were provided by simply moving shells from point A to point B: say, in the Niger Delta, the most important trading hub of West Africa, they cost a thousand (!) times more than in the Maldives, where they were most mined.

Cowries were the most durable of the “natural currencies”: the first evidence of their use as a means of payment dates back to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, and they were forced out of circulation only at the beginning of the 20th century. They were used as a means of payment throughout Africa, India, Indochina, the Pacific Islands and among North American Indians from the Pacific coast to the Great Lakes. And in China, at one time, coins were even banned (to stop counterfeiting), and cowries were the main means of payment. Even the traditional Chinese character for "money" originated from a stylized image of a seashell.

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, cowries were key element slave trading systems. Europeans bought them in the same Maldives for gold, for rice (which was brought from India) or for some other goods. Shells were transported to Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch ports in thousands of tons. Ships going to slave markets in the Niger Delta or Zanzibar often carried no cargo other than cowries. Slaves were driven mainly from the interior regions of Africa (Uganda, Congo, Zaire), where cowries were the most common “currency” and, of course, were much more expensive than on the coast.

The growing cotton and sugar cane plantations in the New World required more and more slaves. Accordingly, Europeans brought more and more cowries to Africa. The natural result of this was inflation. In the second half of the 19th century, so many shells became needed to purchase a shipment of slaves in the interior of Africa that the profit from resale of slaves to planters no longer covered the cost of transporting cowries. Thus began the decline of the slave trade, and with it the “shell economy.”

About five hundred years ago you could buy a slave for a dozen cowrie shell beads in Zanzibar. Nowadays, in Zanzibar, a string of such beads can be bought as a souvenir for a dollar or a dollar and a half.

Eternal values

Commodity money as a simple and reliable means of payment arises almost inevitably in any society where there is no established banking system. A textbook example is the Soviet economy during the period of collapse, when “normal” money was rapidly becoming cheaper and there was nothing to buy with it, and people willingly used vodka, cigarettes and similar enduring values in mutual transactions. In prison, where money is simply prohibited, cigarettes usually play their role. Anyone who has read Jack London should remember that the heroes of his stories about Alaska almost never pay in dollars, preferring gold dust. The founding father of economics, Adam Smith, a Scotsman by birth, wrote in the 18th century that in his homeland, peasants often pay each other with nails: “ordinary” money still doesn’t have much to spend on, but they always nail something somewhere necessary.

Money made of metal

Gradually money becomes metallic. And in the seventh century BC, minted coins appeared. They are spreading quickly throughout the world. This is easy to explain, because... coins are convenient to store, transport, split and combine. They have high cost with low volume and weight.

In most countries, silver, copper or bronze were used as the metal for minting coins. And only in Egypt and Assyria was gold used as money two millennia BC. With the growth of commodity-production relations, it became necessary to increase the value of the exchange equivalent. From this moment on, gold and silver become the main money.

Paper money

History of money received a new round of development with the advent paper money. They appeared in 910 in China. And in Russia, the first paper money was introduced under Catherine II in 1769.

With the advent of banks, they became the custodians of money and basic values. When depositing money, a person received a certificate from the bank. It indicated how much money the banker had in custody, and the bearer of this certificate was supposed to receive a certain amount of money from the bank. This made it possible to pay not with coins, but with these certificates. A little time passed, and the certificates themselves began to be equated to real money. This is the history of the appearance of paper money. And the word “banknote” itself originates from English words“bank note” and translated means “bank record”.

And if earlier the economic essence of paper money was the obligation to issue real money, now the banknotes themselves are the same money.

AUSTRALIA - DOLLAR

BHUTAN - NGULTRUM

JAPAN - YEN

The emergence of public central banks

The first such bank appeared in Sweden in 1661. The main tasks of the state central bank were control over banking operations in the country and responsibility for the state of the national currency, including its production.

Other countries were slow to follow Sweden's lead. For example, the central bank in France was founded 140 years later, and in Russian Empire National Bank appeared in 1860. It was only in 1913 that the Federal Reserve System was founded in the United States. Before its introduction, dollar bills were issued by individual American banks, and differed from each other in design and size.

The beginning of globalization

In 1944, the Bretton Woods International Conference was held, at which an agreement was adopted to link the dollar exchange rate to the gold rate and this continued until 1971. It was the dollar that became the international currency on which international trade was based. At the conference, it was decided to create the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It was from the Bretton Woods Conference that the modern process of globalization of the whole world began.

Bank cards

In 1950, the world's first Diners Club credit card was issued to pay for restaurant visits. And in 1952, the American bank Franklin National Bank issued the first bank credit card.

Nowadays, bank cards won’t surprise anyone. History of money continues and gains new momentum. According to statistics, the average American currently has about ten plastic cards for various purposes.

Computers at the service of financiers

The year 1972 marked the involvement of computers in the financial sector. Thus, in the USA, a centralized electronic network is being created to record bank checks. And in 1973, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) was created. The creators of this system were 239 banks representing 15 countries. For the first time, the teletype was no longer used for interbank money transfers.

Beginning in 1977, personal computers became available for retail sale, heralding the computerization of various sectors of the economy and life, the creation of new forms of money, and the advent of the Internet.