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
It’s been a long time and I should probably re-read it to get the jist before spreading what could be a falsehood, but the best way to get the right answer is to post a wrong one, so let’s go.
One of the first forms of currency came from ancient Sumer/Ur. It was an evolution of bartering. Instead of hauling a wagon of barley to the markets and bartering for some shoes, you’d barter and once agreed, hand over a little clay token marked with the agreed upon amount eg 1lb of barley, and the person who was to receiver (the shoemaker in this case) would then seek you out to get the barley at a later time. I believe this clay token had to be broken to be redeemed, and was an agreement between the two parties eg the receiver of the barley couldn’t then hand it to someone else in exchange for a good or service, they would have to redeem the barley and then bargain for the new item.
This system is good, but over time the shoe maker realises that he has a bunch on tokens to redeem but only needs so much barley per week, so now needs to make new deals to sell his excess barley. This proves annoying. So a system where you can trade the token to someone else is devised. But the tokens can break accidentally. This poses a risk to the recipient. So something more durable is needed. Enter metal.
Metal is durable, but is labour intensive, so it is therefore expensive. So the metal needs to be worth the amount of goods being traded or you need to agree that a smaller piece of metal is worth what it says on the face of it (eg paper money is intrinsically worthless, we just say it’s worth $5 because it says it is). Thus a need for standisation is needed, and the ruler gets involved. This also works for them because it is easier to collect taxes in the form of currency and pay for things (eg soldiers/labour) in currency. Rather than having massive warehouses of barley. So the shekel is developed.
This system works, but you start to develop huge amounts of wealth. So now we start using precious metals. Things like gold and silver. These are worth their weight and can buy a lot. The idea of the British pound comes from the fact the gold that made up the coin weighed one pound.
But coins and metal are heavy. If you need to transfer a lot to the next village, you need a chest and a wagon and it’s a painful experience. So in the Middle Ages a system is made whereby you deposit your money with someone and they give you a note saying you can pull out that same amount elsewhere. Congratulations we now have banking and the beginnings of paper money. You can’t transfer this note between people as it’s only between yourself and the bank. Seems we are back to ancient Sumer.
Eventually people realise that banks are safe. And carrying paper money is really useful if you deal in large amounts. So banks start to issue notes to be used as currency. I need to buy a horse, I hand you the note that says there is the horses value of gold in the bank. You then take it to the bank and take out that value of gold.
We fast forward, and banks find holding all that gold to be annoying, so they only hold so much of it, but continue to issue notes. This isn’t too much of an issue because not everyone is going to want their gold all at once.
Then we get bank runs. I’m not going to go into this because i don’t feel I am up to it, and I’ve already gone beyond the scope of your question, but essentially banks start to collapse because they don’t have the money when all the people want all their money and gold. We get another change to paper money being worth what it says, and even though it’s meant to be worth its amount in a precious metal, good luck getting it.
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