History of money: why did we settle on metal for money instead of something else ?

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For example most regions had a rural/ agrarian economy and could have used cattle horns. It would have represented their amount of cattle they had and therefore their actual wealth.
I think there is a small group of people in africa doing something like that with fish right now.

So why settle for metal coins?

In: Economics

13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

There was a great “Planet Money” podcast episode recently (might have been a rerun) that discussed why gold was such a great currency. They essentially went down the periodic table and eliminated what would be good as a currency and what wouldn’t and surprisingly gold worked out to be the best option available. Very insightful.

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