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History of money
The history of money is the development over time of systems for the exchange of goods and services. Money is a means of fulfilling these functions indirectly and in general rather than directly, as with barter.
Money may take a physical form as in coins and notes, or may exist as a written or electronic account. It may have intrinsic value (commodity money), be legally exchangeable for something with intrinsic value (representative money), or have only nominal value (fiat money).
The invention of money was prehistoric.[better source needed] Consequently, any story of how money first developed is mostly based on conjecture and logical inference.
A significant amount of evidence establishes that many things were traded in ancient markets that could be described as a medium of exchange. These included livestock and grain – things directly useful in themselves – but also merely attractive items such as cowrie shells or beads which were exchanged for more useful commodities.
Due to the complexities of ancient history (ancient civilizations developing at different paces and not keeping accurate records, or having their records destroyed), and because the ancient origins of economic systems precede written history, it has not been possible to trace the true origin of the invention of money. Further, historical evidence supports the idea that money has taken two main forms, divided into the broad categories of money of account (debits and credits on ledgers) and money of exchange (tangible media of exchange made from clay, leather, paper, bamboo, metal, etc.).
As "money of account" depends on the ability to record a count, the tally stick was a significant development. The oldest of these dates from the Aurignacian, about 30,000 years ago. The 20,000-year-old Ishango bone – found near one of the sources of the Nile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – seems to use matched tally marks on the thigh bone of a baboon for correspondence counting. Accounting records – in the monetary system sense of the term accounting – dating back more than 7,000 years have been found in Mesopotamia, and documents from ancient Mesopotamia show lists of expenditures, and goods received and traded and the history of accounting evidences that money of account pre-dates the use of coinage by several thousand years. David Graeber proposes that money as a unit of account was invented when the unquantifiable obligation "I owe you one" transformed into the quantifiable notion of "I owe you one unit of something". In this view, money emerged first as money of account and only later took the form of money of exchange.
Regarding money of exchange, the use of representative money historically pre-dates the invention of coinage as well. In the ancient empires of Egypt, Babylon, India and China, the temples and palaces often had commodity warehouses which made use of clay tokens and other materials which served as evidence of a claim upon a portion of the goods stored in the warehouses. There is no concrete evidence these kinds of tokens were used for trade, however, only for administration and accounting.
While not the oldest form of money of exchange, various metals (both common and precious metals) were also used in both barter systems and monetary systems; and the historical use of metals provides some of the clearest illustration of how barter systems gave way to monetary systems.[citation needed] The Romans' use of bronze, while not among the most ancient examples, is well documented, and it illustrates this transition clearly. First, the aes rude (rough bronze) was used. This was a heavy weight of unmeasured bronze used in what was probably a barter system: the suitability of bronze for barter resulted solely from the alloy's usefulness in metalsmithing, and it was bartered with the intent of being turned into tools. The next historical step was bronze in bars that had a 5-pound pre-measured weight (presumably to make barter easier and fairer), called aes signatum (signed bronze), which is where debate arises as to whether this was still barter, or had become a monetary system. Finally, there is a clear break from the use of bronze in barter into its indisputable use as money, because of lighter measures of bronze not intended to be used as anything other than coinage for transactions. The aes grave (heavy bronze) (or As) is the start of the use of coins in Rome, but not the oldest known example of metal coinage.
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History of money AI simulator
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History of money
The history of money is the development over time of systems for the exchange of goods and services. Money is a means of fulfilling these functions indirectly and in general rather than directly, as with barter.
Money may take a physical form as in coins and notes, or may exist as a written or electronic account. It may have intrinsic value (commodity money), be legally exchangeable for something with intrinsic value (representative money), or have only nominal value (fiat money).
The invention of money was prehistoric.[better source needed] Consequently, any story of how money first developed is mostly based on conjecture and logical inference.
A significant amount of evidence establishes that many things were traded in ancient markets that could be described as a medium of exchange. These included livestock and grain – things directly useful in themselves – but also merely attractive items such as cowrie shells or beads which were exchanged for more useful commodities.
Due to the complexities of ancient history (ancient civilizations developing at different paces and not keeping accurate records, or having their records destroyed), and because the ancient origins of economic systems precede written history, it has not been possible to trace the true origin of the invention of money. Further, historical evidence supports the idea that money has taken two main forms, divided into the broad categories of money of account (debits and credits on ledgers) and money of exchange (tangible media of exchange made from clay, leather, paper, bamboo, metal, etc.).
As "money of account" depends on the ability to record a count, the tally stick was a significant development. The oldest of these dates from the Aurignacian, about 30,000 years ago. The 20,000-year-old Ishango bone – found near one of the sources of the Nile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – seems to use matched tally marks on the thigh bone of a baboon for correspondence counting. Accounting records – in the monetary system sense of the term accounting – dating back more than 7,000 years have been found in Mesopotamia, and documents from ancient Mesopotamia show lists of expenditures, and goods received and traded and the history of accounting evidences that money of account pre-dates the use of coinage by several thousand years. David Graeber proposes that money as a unit of account was invented when the unquantifiable obligation "I owe you one" transformed into the quantifiable notion of "I owe you one unit of something". In this view, money emerged first as money of account and only later took the form of money of exchange.
Regarding money of exchange, the use of representative money historically pre-dates the invention of coinage as well. In the ancient empires of Egypt, Babylon, India and China, the temples and palaces often had commodity warehouses which made use of clay tokens and other materials which served as evidence of a claim upon a portion of the goods stored in the warehouses. There is no concrete evidence these kinds of tokens were used for trade, however, only for administration and accounting.
While not the oldest form of money of exchange, various metals (both common and precious metals) were also used in both barter systems and monetary systems; and the historical use of metals provides some of the clearest illustration of how barter systems gave way to monetary systems.[citation needed] The Romans' use of bronze, while not among the most ancient examples, is well documented, and it illustrates this transition clearly. First, the aes rude (rough bronze) was used. This was a heavy weight of unmeasured bronze used in what was probably a barter system: the suitability of bronze for barter resulted solely from the alloy's usefulness in metalsmithing, and it was bartered with the intent of being turned into tools. The next historical step was bronze in bars that had a 5-pound pre-measured weight (presumably to make barter easier and fairer), called aes signatum (signed bronze), which is where debate arises as to whether this was still barter, or had become a monetary system. Finally, there is a clear break from the use of bronze in barter into its indisputable use as money, because of lighter measures of bronze not intended to be used as anything other than coinage for transactions. The aes grave (heavy bronze) (or As) is the start of the use of coins in Rome, but not the oldest known example of metal coinage.