Instead of moving around, at the end of the last Ice Age, people in different parts of the world began to stay in the same place, grow plants and keep animals. It was probably families or whole clans who had got hold of land or flocks of sheep. They would share and trade with others.
Around 10,000 years ago people began to makes lots of little objects out of clay , mostly simple shapes like ball hole in them, as if they were meant to be strung together. These objects indicated that people started counting and these objects were a way of keeping track of things that people own.
People later started keeping records on clay tablets and began using a kind of shorthand. Instead of drawing, say 100 tiny sheep-symbols, the drew one sheep-symbol and next to it a sing meaning " a hundred" on a tablet. It then as a sign indicating who owned a hundred sheep.
When silver started to be used as money, it was the weight that mattered. Even a tiny amount of sliver money, it was clearly a lot for some people. So it was very important that whoever dealt with money had a good pair of scales and some accurate weights, and a way of telling that the stuff that was traded really was silver. It was the temples that were in charge. If you wanted to buy or sell something using silver, you probably had to go to the temple.
Coins were invented. A coin was a piece of metal of a particular size and shape, usually with something on it to tell you how much it weighted and a sign or symbol to show where it was produced or minted. With coins, peopled don't have to weigh it every time people want to use it. So people don't have to go off to the temple every time to trade. This makes it much easier to do business.
European government began to issue paper money as the Chinese Emperor had done hundreds of years before. The first country to do this was Sweden, in 1661, but it only lasted for just over ten years. Then, in 1694, the Bank of England was founded in London and began to issue sterling bank notes, which it still does.
Is money a good thing or a bad thing?
"We seem to have got into the habit of thinking about pretty much everything in term of money. How much does it cost? How much is it worth? How much have I got to spend? Have I got more than you have? When you start thinking like that most of the time, there's a danger that you start believing that buying and selling are the only important things in life, and that anything that can't be bought and sold doesn't really count. And that also means it's easy to start believing that all you need in life is to has as much money as possible. I don't know what you think, but I don't think that's a very good thing at all." p.57
The price of everything and the value of nothing
Jenkins, M. & Kitamura, S. (2014). The story of money: from bartering to bail-out. London: Walker Books.
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