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This article is conspicuously missing many examples of early money, such as the cowrie shells, and bronze imitations, which are widely regarded as the first true, standardized money. This brief Nova overview of the history of money is vastly superior to the current article, and wikipedia should aim to surpass it: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/moolah/history.html -- Qwasty 05:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
The use of types of "claim checks" or "claim tickets" made of paper, wood, bamboo, etc.. upon the stores of ancient city states' warehouses is what "commodity money" had been, not the use of commodities directly in barter. That section of the article should be made clearer. This was the evolutionary step between barter and the eventual use of metal tokens as the mediums of exchange. These warehouse "claim tickets" are what eventually evolved into the "Treasury notes" when city state warehouses evolved into State Treasuries and Banks. It stands to reason that the use of metal tokens was originally a type of security feature to eliminate counterfeiting of paper, wood, bamboo type of tokens because of the difficulty of mining and refining metal and making coins. There is no evidence that gold and silver were valuable in the sense that they are perceived today until these metals in the form of coins started being used as the medium of exchange. And a bit further, the invention of the ledger (in crude form), and money of account happened before money of exchange (paper/coin) was invented. Barter -> ledgers -> city states -> city state warehouses -> warehouse ledgers -> warehouse stores' claim tickets -> Treasuries & Banks -> State minted metal coins -> Treasury & Bank promissory notes. Christopher Theodore ( talk) 18:44, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
Please provide the empirical evidence for barter as mechanism of exchange. Smith and Ricardo can be forgiven since they had no ethnographic record of merit to consult. We now have an abundance of evidence from a wide of variety of cultures and oral reckoning of debt to provide goods, or service or labor-time in the future is the far more commmon form of regulating trade in pre-state social formations than barter. Barter is mostly mythos. But I appreciate that you recognize that Gold and Silver etc. have zero "intrinsic" worth - that all worth attributed to commodity money is a social convention and not intrinsic.
What does B.P. stand for? Can somone create a link and an explenation?
In the article:
"It is said that all gold found on earth (which forms approximately a single cube 20 m a side)".
Is that 20 meters or 20 miles?
I've added references to the cowrie shells and imitations to the "commodity money" section of the article. Feel free to elaborate on those if you have good historical sources (academic works, that is, not TV shows). I don't otherwise understand the general complaints above and below, as there is extensive and high quality discussion of coinage, commodity money, barter, and credit money. The credit money part is controversal, but not rubbish: More comments on that below.
Perhaps these complaints reflect that the article should have a better introduction. If people agree on this feel free to propose an introduction, or I will.
Meanwhile, I recommend removing the disclaimer that the article "needs attention" as it is an excellent, well above average article and readers shouldn't be discouraged from consulting it. -- 198.91.39.109 20:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
In the last section the following claim is made: "Also the French word for money, Argent, derives from the Greek άργυρος, and translates also to silver." Surely "argent" it is from Latin "argentum"? Does anybody know the etymology for certain? Rhyolite 23:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
The section on Credit Money in the article is largely rubbish.
There should be some mention of fractional reserve banking in the example section, since that's the only way a bank can lend out someone else's deposits. A 100% reserve would not permit the money to be loaned out without the permission of the owner.
The writer also neglects to mention that the writing of the cheque changes the ownership of the coins, so they are still only owned by one person - you should have them in your account when your cheque is cashed, since they no longer belong to you, so they should probably remain there for the short time until they are reallocated.
It is true that the loaned coins will probably wind up back in the bank again, allowing the reserve requirement to be met more easily, but those loaned coins being returned to not increase the levels of the reserves. I offer a (probably unnecessary) example.
Let's say that I am a very small bank. I have one dollar of deposits and the bank has a 50% reserve requirement, so I loan 50 cents of that dollar - the maximum at this reserve level, which returns to me as a deposit (best case scenario).
I still have only one real dollar in reality, but I now have $1.5 in deposits against 50 cents in loan. I can only lend another 25 cents before I meet my reserve limit. So I lend it, and it comes back in another deposit. Now I have $1.75 in deposits and 75 cents loaned out, but still only one dollar in balance. I can only lend 12.5 cents, etc. In reality, I can only have a maximum of 1 dollar loaned out for every 2 dollars in hand.
Ergo, that part of the Credit Money in this article is really about fractional reserve banking, is poorly written in either case, and should be either removed or moved to fractional reserve banking.
Also I propose the following for the opening paragraphs of that section...
Octothorn 12:28, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
198.91.39.109 20:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose deleting the section on credit money and replacing it with this:
Credit money often exists in conjunction with other money such as fiat money or commodity money, and from the user's point of view is indistinguishable from it. Most of the western world's money is credit money derived from national fiat money currencies.
In a modern economy, a bank will lend all but a small portion of its deposits to borrowers, this is known as [fractional reserve banking]. In doing so, it increases the total [money supply] above that of the total amount of the fiat money in existence (also known as M0). While a bank will not have access to sufficient cash (fiat money) to meet all the obligations it has to depositors if they wish to withdraw the balance of their cheque accounts (credit money), the majority of transactions will occur using the credit money (cheques and electronic transfers).
Strictly speaking a debt is not money, primarily because debt can not act as a unit of account. All debts are denominated in units of something external to the debt. However, credit money certainly acts as a substitute for money when it is used in other functions of money (medium of exchange and store of value).
Reasons: 1/There are other articles on money supply, fractional reserve banking etc, and I don't think we should replicate them all through wikipedia, just link to them. 2/The explanation of credit money was not good. 3/Other people appear to agree with me on at least point 3.
If anyone has concerns, suggestions or amendments, speak up and we can work on them. Otherwise I will make the change in a few days.
-- PatClay 22:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Changes made as no dissenting views were heard.
-- PatClay 17:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
PatClay -"A debt is not money. Debt can not act as a unit of account. All debts are denominated in units of something external to the debt"
I would disagree. Money is the debt in which other debts are denominated. The Canadian Dollar is a debt of the Federal Government that, as the national unit of account, is denominated in itself. Vilhelmo ( talk) 14:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I think we should explain clearly that barter has the problem of "double coincidents of wants". To solve that problem, people begin to obtain highly marketable goods for use as exchange medium. Competition naturally sets in as people attempt to discover which commodity functions the best as money. All throughout the world, precious metals, particularly gold, emerged as the best functioning money. The world wide gold standard was a naturally occuring phenomenon. In the 19th century, under this standard, prices were very stable, and the standard of living increased very rapidly.
Banks originate as a safe place to store gold, and the issure paper warehouse reciepts. Because (and only because) these reciepts are redeemable in gold, the paper notes are traded as money. Ludwig von Mises, through regression analysis, proved that money MUST originate as a valuable commodity.
Fractional reserve banking originates by bankers printing up "extra" reciepts, that is reciepts that are not backed by gold. It is counterfeiting with a fancy name. Bank runs are the market solution to this, and bankers hate bank runs, and turn to government to try and legitimize fractional reserve banking.
Governments sieze control of money in a 3 step process. 1) Monopolizing the minting of gold coins. This makes "coin clipping" (inflation) possible. 2) Monopolizing the printing of paper money, which is redeemable in gold. 3) Outlawing monetary gold, and requiring all people to accept paper money in payment of debt, regardless of what contracts may have required. (pure fiat money)
In general, I think the reader would appreciate understanding that gold is free market money, and that pure fiat money can only exist under force, not on a free market.
Comments?
TruthSeeker1234 05:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Utter garbage! Monetary systems have their origin in and are creations of government. Money was invented in the temple & palaces of Sumer as a unit of account to denominate debts (a credit system) as part of an administered price system. ALL money is debt and a unit of account. Gold is gold and any gold standard is a form of government price setting. Money existed prior to price setting markets.
What we call money is a transferable non-interest bearing debt of the federal government, created by the act of government spending and destroy by taxation. Every net dollar is a result of federal deficit spending. No deficit no net private savings. Vilhelmo ( talk) 10:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
Everything you said was incorrect myth & misinformation
See:
Modern Monetary Theory: A Primer
Vilhelmo (
talk) —Preceding
undated comment added
01:01, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Somtimes the history of monry is un-avalible because it never going to happen... 100 years from now and theirs going to be another and weirder history of money and we wont fully understand the first meaning...You see time just never waits...
I don't think conspiracy theorists are required here.
The Good article nomination for History of money has failed, for the following reason:
Following WP:WIAGA,
jwanders Talk 20:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
The use of proto-money may date back to at least 75,000 B.P., when shell necklaces were made in Blombos Cave in South Africa. These necklaces would have provided the basic attributes needed of early money. In cultures where metal working was unknown, shell or ivory jewelry were the most divisible, easily storable and transportable, scarce, and hard to counterfeit objects that could be made. It is highly unlikely that there were formal markets in 75,000 B.P (any more than there are in recently observed hunter-gatherer cultures). Nevertheless, proto-money would have been useful in reducing the costs of less frequent transactions that were crucial to hunter-gatherer cultures, especially bride purchase, splitting property upon death, tribute, and intertribal trade in hunting ground rights (“starvation insurance”) and implements. In the absence of a medium of exchange, all of these transactions suffer from the basic problem of barter -- they require an improbable coincidence of wants or events.
I deleted the paragraph above because of the bias inherant in the dating. Nobody really knows for a historical fact of any dates prior to about 4000 B.C., and thus, although citations may be available, confirmation is impossible. Jason Hommel 05:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The dates are based on radioisotope dating described in peer-reviewed literature, thus are well confirmed. So I'm reversing. What is the significance of 4,000 BC? 67.188.125.25 18:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I've also updated for the more recent discovery dating beads back to 100,000 BP, and added a link to the jewellery article which discusses historical and contemporary observations of monetary use of jewellery. 67.188.125.25 19:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
There needs to be a short explanation of "proto-money" when the word is first introduced.
This is difficult to read: Chinese produces metal imitations of cowrie shells and metal tools that may have been the precursors of coinage.. Changed, PWC
The paragraph after The following example illustrates this. is not written in an encylopedic tone and needs to be amended. I suggested substituting you for a third person example. The story is altogether told too colloqiually. Addressing the reader directly is often a poor practice.
The paragraph beginning with The word money in Greek language is confusing; please clarify it. Rintrah 07:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone even care about this article? I hope my copy-edits were not in vain. Rintrah 10:26, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I care. I think the subject is a pretty important one. I fixed one of your problems, I will have a look at the credit money part, the greek, well, that is over my head. Your work is appreciated. -- PatClay 17:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I cleaned up the grammar and phrasing in the sections on Indo-European and Semitic words and took out the sections of New Testament explanation which are only tangentially related to the topic. [[User:Womzilla|Womzilla], 2 Jan 2007.
The a article doesn't explain how money is created through debt. Brian Pearson 15:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
User Xicsies believes that the book of Revelation predicts that the " Mark of the Beast" will be a form of money, and that this should be included in the History of money article. User:Andrew c and I (-- Wragge 14:37, 16 November 2007 (UTC)) dispute this, and I'd like to request that Xicsies address our concerns before any further reverting or deleting take place. We feel that:
The argument so far given by Xicsies (in the summary history) for keeping this passage is that it wasn't challenged for twenty months. I'm sure we can find many articles containing irrelevant passages of personal views & original research with a longer lifetime: preserving them isn't Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia is inherently dynamic, so there's no possible argument from incumbancy.-- Wragge 14:37, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfx7rfr2_211crx6c26k Money-History, a very basic outside view point of money and its antecedents.
I would not call it a fringe view as that is negative in connotation. I think the article is better with this link in... as it gives some other aspects to the subject besides the mainstream that are interesting and thought provoking. The article is sourced in multiple ways and the basic history is interesting. skip sievert ( talk) 15:57, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
The site may not be added to the ELs. It is on Google Docs, meaning that it is a personally published work. Furthermore, it notes that it is taken from/associated with a blog on blogspot--and the EL policy clearly states that links to blogs are to be avoided. Carl.bunderson ( talk) 16:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Moreover, this is thinly veiled self-promotion, Skip. The link is being removed if it is there now, and your talk page has earned a spot on my watchlist. Carl.bunderson ( talk) 16:40, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Well you are entitled to your opinion... but I fail to see how that is self promotion. skip sievert ( talk) 16:43, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Ah ok. I read it and you are right. I will not do that in the future. I viewed it though as only information and was not thinking in terms of promotion, but I suppose it ultimately is. Thanks skip sievert ( talk) 17:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I was interested in looking up "money" because of its function as an abstract conceptualisation of value made concrete. I'm won't even try and say more! LoL I just wanted to see when the concept first emerged. When did the break with other forms of exchange and valuation e.g bartering happen and how did this relate to economic activity and "civilisation" generally? The dates etc given in the various articles here on Wiki differ widely and it seems that the subjects are being considered without reference to underlying concepts. For instance the article on Money identifies the use of gold bars by the Egyptians as a form of money when it is not at all clear that that was their function. Money, I would argue, is NOT simply an exchange item, it's a vehicle for valuation and converts real value (concrete and intangible) into objectivised and absolute value (abstract and tangible). The article on Economy dates the emergence of these ideas back to Aristotle in around 500 BC yet in Money the origins of money are put thousands of years earlier. It is very hard to see how the substance of a concept (money) can predate the existence of the concept itself. LookingGlass ( talk) 07:54, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
You might want to check this out Looking Glass. It is not a reference for wikipedia.... but contains I think a good time line and conceptualization frame work for money in general. http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfx7rfr2_211crx6c26k Money-History&Energy Accounting
Your right about the articles... they are a little conflicting and need more neutral and objective formatting and reference citations or footnotes, which I hope to contribute to. skip sievert ( talk) 20:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Noted. Agreed. The lead itself, links to the Money article, but uses a different definition than the lead there. Why? Christopher Theodore ( talk) 20:35, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Add articles here:
II | ( t - c) 10:35, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Good work Carl Bunderson, for quickly reverting the recent edits made by someone, trying to inject what could be viewed as religious opinions or beliefs ... for lack of a better term, into the article. skip sievert ( talk) 05:08, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Term is barely used today and various subsections are normally assigned to the other types of money. This is an accurate description of the term which the editor who insists on pushing this POV changed. The original diff here.
I removed a section on oche-as-money which was uncited, as well as a section mentioning jewelry-as-money where the cited article only mentioned jewelry as early trade goods. Here the cite doesn't support the conclusion given in the article.
The uncited sentences which follow also share the same problem of conflating trade with money.
The next sentence looks to Marcel Mauss for support, but the Google Books extract that I read doesn't support the broad conclusion stated in the WP article. The next sentence for which David Graeber is cited, starts with an unsupported premise "When barter in fact did occur..." and concludes with an "...it was usually between either complete strangers or would-be enemies." These seems to contradict other sources on the emergence of money. I will try to verify that article's conclusion is supported by the Graeber text, but it someone can do so sooner, please comment here. patsw ( talk) 12:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Graeber's work is supported by the historical evidence. There has been no documented society that used barter as its primary means of exchange & distribution neither between members of a single group nor as a means of trade between two or more distinct groups. It is derived axiomatically from first principles, not evidentially. Hatred of all & any form of government or public institution leads some to rule out by definition the possibility that the origins of money may lie in public institutions. The love of the "market", likewise, causes some to seek the origins of money there. Vilhelmo ( talk) 00:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I think this stuff about goldsmith banking is nonsense, I could not find any evidence for it. There are just some anti-Semitic stories circulating in the internet, trying to stress the role of goldsmiths in the history of banking, because "Goldsmith" is a common jewish name - and so people get the impression that it was all a jewish invention ... Forget this! Forget the idea that every goldsmith in the Middle-Ages had a big safe and lots of gold in it. This would have been much too risky. Forget the idea that a "goldsmith" worked only with gold - he worked as well with silver, copper and other materials, so there was no need to store more gold than he actually made use of. This stuff about goldsmith bankers should be deleted. -- Klingsor ( talk) 18:00, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Klingsor. The Goldsmith story is full of ideology. The crucial point is did Goldsmiths issue bills of exchange like ANY merchant, or did the Goldsmith use money stored for safe keeping as his own (fraud). I suspect the first case, but the opponents of fractional reserve banking ALWAYS start with the Goldsmith's tale to insinuate that banking is fraudulent. 182.52.196.140 ( talk) 11:18, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
The very first reliable source on Yworo's list states that Golsmiths BECAME bankers - they paid interest on gold deposited with them. In other words the gold was LENT to them and they were legally allowed to do whatever they like with it, including lend it out to others. This is very different from the story of the fraudulent warehouse receipts. 182.52.196.140 ( talk) 11:25, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Modern money (and most ancient money) is essentially a token — in other words, an abstraction. Paper currency is perhaps the most common type of physical money. However, objects of gold or silver present many of money's essential properties -- Largehole ( talk) 18:02, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
This article is so full of misinformation I'm not sure where to start. All money is a debt of the issuer, whether its stamp on metal, paper, wood, makes no difference at all. The history of coinage is not the same as the history of money. Vilhelmo ( talk) 03:21, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
- "but if I have some gold and go to the bank and get some money for it, where is the debt? What does selling gold or anything have anything to do with the nature of money?
-"because a state can't have any debt" What? Why would you think such a thing when a brief glance at reality proves it false?
The rest of your comment is gibberish. Vilhelmo ( talk) 14:13, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
If I possess a 10-euro note, who do I owe? Who owes me? If it is an asset to me, I can expect to exchange it on demand for gold or other goods and services. When I do so, I exchange one asset to another. That 10-euro note never becomes a thing that is promised to anyone else until I contract a good or service. D. F. Schmidt ( talk) 12:39, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
The allegedly Greek word in this section is not Greek. Not least because it has a Latin letter in it (the accented sigma, which perhaps is supposed to be an alpha?). It's not clear to me what the word is supposed to be anyway. A link to something like the Perseus on-line version of the Liddell and Scott lexicon would help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eponymous-Archon ( talk • contribs) 15:07, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
The first sentence contains a major error. It reads,
This is patently false. The history of money is not synonymous with the history of coinage. It is widely accepted that money originated as a unit of account in the public sector temples & palaces of bronze age Mesopotamia.
Sources:
Vilhelmo ( talk) 04:35, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
It should somehow be mentioned, that since the invention of paper money in China this "credit" was in fact a deposit (aka. "fund"), but no loan. The invention of loans came much later, after the money producing monopolists (i.e. banks) wanted to earn interest. However, nowadays the word "credit" usually means loan. This is probably also an issue of the English language because there is no common word used like fund (or "accompt"). So therefore I'd change the sentence: In this view, paper money emerged first as funds and only later acquired the functions of a medium of exchange and a store of value. That's exactly what happend in old China. It's quite unfortunate that in English the word credit is used for both loan and fund. Interestingly this may also be the reason why credit cards are much more popular in the English speaking regions. Language makes the people, deeply influencing their way of thinking - and their behaviour, too. -- 178.197.224.225 ( talk) 18:15, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
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“ | As early as 9000 BCE both grain and cattle were used as money or as barter (Davies) (the first grain remains found, considered to be evidence of pre-agricultural practice date to 17,000 BCE). [1] [2] [3] | ” |
There's a problem with this part of the Emergence of Money section. Davies's book is supposed to be the source on the existence of barter in 9000 BC but I've just checked the part of it dedicated to barter (pp 9-18) and there's no mention of it there (and has no concrete examples of barter anywhere else, for that matter). So either this information was taken from another source or it's not sourced at all. While the references look formidable, they lack page numbers which makes it hard to find what exactly do they say. Alæxis ¿question? 12:43, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I also find this section of the article to be confusing: it confuses barter with money in the opening sentence. Money is not just the use of *any* object as a medium of exchange, but the use of a thing without value (or very little value) as an abstract representation of other objects that have value. If an object has an inherent value (even if it is commonly traded), then it's not money or a monetary system, it is the barter system. Christopher Theodore ( talk) 20:54, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
“ | Anatolian obsidian as a raw material for stone-age tools was distributed as early as 15,000 BCE, with organized trade occurring in the 9th millennium. (Cauvin;Chataigner 1998) [4] In Sardinia, one of the four main sites for sourcing the material deposits of obsidian within the Mediterranean, trade in this was replaced in the 3rd millennium by trade in copper and silver. [5] [6] [7] | ” |
It's not clear how this passage is related to the topic of the article. Okay, trade existed in 15,000 BC and in 9,000 BC and in 3,000 BC, so what? It must've been quite a different trade compared to the modern one. Does it mean that money existed as well to facilitate that trade? If yes, it should be explained clearly in the article. It's hard to examine the provided sources since no page numbers are given and the second reference is a matryoshka one with four links to google books (actually there was also another one to Stephen King's Shawshank Redemption which I've just deleted).
I propose to remove this passage as it's not relevant to the topic of this article but would be happy to salvage something from it. I'll also try to look at the sources and try to see if they have something to do with money. Alæxis ¿question? 13:00, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
The earliest means of storage are thought to be money-boxes ( θησαυροί [1]) made similar to the construction of a bee-hive, [2] [3] as of the Mycenae tombs of 1550–1500 BCE. [4] [5] [6]
Couldn't find which source states that this was the earliest means of storage and it's not even clear what was stored there. It seems unlikely since silver and gold had been in use before those times and probably had had to be stored somewhere. I suggest to remove the passage unless its relevance is established and sources fixed. Alæxis ¿question? 13:12, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
The article's structure is not up to the standard of an encyclopedia. The sections start in chronological order and then become just a laundry list of various types of money. The scope of the article is not clear - it is about the "broad money" or just physical objects (in my opinion the former option is preferable). There is a lot of unsourced claims - I dealt with a couple of the most appalling ones but that's just a tip of the iceberg.
To start improving the article its structure should be agreed on. Since this is an article about the history of money the chronological order would probably be most uncontroversial and convenient.
Glyn Davies uses the following periodisation: 3000BC-600BC; 600BC-410AD; 410-1485; 1485-1640; 1640-1789; 1789-1914; 1914-now)
Jack Weatherford's one is: before 600BC; 600BC-200BC; 200BC-1300AD; 1300-1450; 1450- ... These two books are too Eurocentric for my liking, couldn't find anything on Chinese paper currency there for example Davies's book actually deals with Chinese paper money.
David Kroeber in his book about the history of debt divides the history into the Axial Age (800BC-600AD), Middle Ages (600-1450) and Age of Empires (1450-1971) What are other good and recent overview books on the subject? Alæxis ¿question? 20:02, 16 June 2017 (UTC) So a possible periodisation could be something along the lines of
I've reordered the information here, feel free to check it out. Disclaimer: I haven't changed the content so there are some repetitions and awkwardness and the problems with sources remain, so it's just to get the impression of a new approach. Alæxis ¿question? 21:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
I have finally changed the article as proposed earlier (for now only the first half, before the Trade Bills of Exchange section). Feedback is definitely welcome, specifically whether I missed something important from the old article, comments on the new structure, what else should be included. Alaexis ¿question? 10:46, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
The confusion in the article of what is properly still the barter system, with the use of abstract representations of value as mediums of exchange aka money (money of exchange or money of account), must be eliminated. Barter should be mentioned because it is an evolutionary step in the History of Money, but the distinction must be clarified. This confusion taints the lead and the article.
I think we can all agree in light of the evidence (and lack of it) that the true invention of money and its origins in history can be said to precede written history. Thus, we are left with making presumptions (and do note the subtle distinction between a "presumption" and an "assumption").
There has been some debate about which came first, money of account or money of exchange. Again, this precedes written history. We do find written evidence of ancient historians speculating on the origins of money along these lines. So even they were not quite sure... and made presumptions.
We also find that the use of money of exchange in the form of tokens made of paper, wood, bamboo, shells, etc.. as types of “warehouse claim tokens” for goods stored in the ancient city states’ warehouses occurred long before people started mining and refining gold & silver and striking coins. These tokens represented goods stored in the warehouses (like grain), and it was the goods in the warehouses that were valuable, not the tokens. The token could be exchanged in the barter markets as if they were a bag of the grain only because the token could be taken to the warehouse and traded for a bag of grain.
It stands to reason that the use of metal tokens ([bronze], gold, and silver coin) as the medium of exchange was turned to originally as a type of security feature to hinder counterfeiting of the warehouse claim tokens because of the difficulty of mining and refining it, not because it was scarce or inherently valuable. In fact, there is no evidence that gold & silver became valuable in the modern sense until being used by the ancient city states as the medium of exchange aka money of exchange.
It also stands to reason that, even older than the invention of money of exchange in any form, is the invention of the ledger in very crude forms ( tally sticks & hash marks), and the presumption should be that the oldest form of money is most likely money of account — credits & debts on a ledger representing something of value, or something of value owed.
This presumption becomes even stronger when we consider how the warehouses of small townships or tribes would naturally be created and those responsible for managing them would start doing things before the invention of money of exchange. Tally sticks would work fine for small community but with a large city state you can see how quickly it would become an accounting nightmare especially with such crude ledgers (which gives birth to the need for money of exchange and evolutions of the ledger).
Consider this line of reason and the presumption it gives rise to, supports, and strengthens:
I find support lacking for the CURRENT PRESUMPTION (more of an assumption, in fact) that dominates this article, and that presumption is that money of exchange was invented first. The use of an abstract token representing stored goods in a warehouse is a much more complicated series of thoughts than making hash marks on a tally stick. And the confusion of the barter system with the use of money is not justification of the presumption that things commonly bartered constituted the invention of "money" in it's true sense.
Further, we have evidence of the existence of the tally stick in conjunction with the reasoning presented above supporting the presumption that money of account is the oldest form of money... and further, that this gave rise to the invention of money of exchange. Christopher Theodore ( talk) 22:19, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
<<Outdent| @
ChristopherTheodore: Looking back at the start of this section and the associated edit I find we are less in agreement than I thought.
You wrote on 2017-12-13: "
money of account (debits and credits on ledgers) and
money of exchange (tangible mediums of exchange representing value made from wood, paper, bamboo, metal, etc..)"
I am content with your 'money of' terminology but don't think your definitions are quite right. 'Money of account' is records of credit and debt but not necessarily on ledgers, it can also take the form of tokens made from wood, paper, bamboo, metal, clay, any kind of IOU, receipt, credit note, bank note, etc. Whereas 'money of exchange' is a commodity of 'intrinsic' value which is used as a proxy in barter and has no associated debt/credit.
I do not think it can be said that 'money of account' led to 'money of exchange', they are quite different concepts and developed to meet different needs. Unfortunately, much historical writing has been premised on the assumption that all money is 'money of exchange' and has shoehorned everything into that framework. 'Representative money' is one example of such shoehorning. I think this article is still riddled with it, including your sterling efforts I'm sorry to say.
Wingsail (
talk)
01:44, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
Now I think I see a way forward here.
We are dealing with two basic kinds of money which developed in parallel, not from each other, for two different purposes.
I suggest that this article therefore needs two Histories of Money.
Money of account developed from simple debt/credit relations within groups. It is manifested in myriad forms of (usually valueless) token and ledger. Barter played essentially no role in this story.
Money of exchange, in contrast, is all about barter between groups. It is manifested in pieces of a valuable commodity.
At present we have these two stories hopelessly tangled and confused.
Wingsail (
talk)
01:34, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
Unless the unit of something owed was a unit of currency, it continues to be barter. And why would anyone bother to be the first to say "I'll give you these five ears of corn for a chip of gold. Now you owe me one chip of gold?" D. F. Schmidt ( talk) 12:44, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
If their is a source for Graeber claiming this is how money developed then it should be included - perhaps explicitly stating that it's Graeber's theory. What do the other sources claim on this matter?
Jonpatterns (
talk)
10:56, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
I have taken it upon myself to modify the opening paragraph to remove what I perceive as ideological bias. I have also added a sub-section alerting the reader to the ideological tension inherent in this topic. This may deserve a box of some kind? I am largely in agreement with the comments of Vilhelmo and Christopher Theodore above and, in lieu of wholesale neutralising, I think some sort of heads-up is warranted. Wingsail ( talk) 18:28, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
I have removed the emphasis on medium of exchange, which is a feature of the commodity theory, from the opening paragraph. Credit theory regards unit of account as more fundamental and I don't think we want to have to reiterate the whole of the functions of money page here just to maintain balance. Wingsail ( talk) 14:32, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Theories of money would be better treated as its own article. Both the theory and history of money are quite involved - and although there is overlap they will be more clear as separate articles. Jonpatterns ( talk) 11:25, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
I would like to draw all editors attention to this article by Tim Harford -- who writes the Financial Times's Undercover Economist column -- which summarizes Julius Jordan & Denise Schmandt-Besserat work.
Julius & Denise are the 2 main players in anthropology involved with early forms of cuneiform accounting and clay tokens used as money.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39870485 — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChristopherTheodore ( talk • contribs) 21:02, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
It seems worth pointing out some of the properties of cryptocurrencies that seem to be unique in the history of money. I am not adding these yet, because I'm not knowledgeable enough about the history of money to know if these are actually unique. Please weigh-in if you have such knowledge.
- Cryptocurrencies may be the first instance in history of a money being adopted that has zero non-monetary value (even paper money has monetary value, e.g. burning it as fuel), yet it's value isn't imposed or bootstrapped by any state or external power or mandate. Put differently, they may be the first currencies in history to bootstrap value and acceptance without any non-monetary value or authority to seed the bootstrapping process.
- There are anonymous cryptocurrencies, ZCash being the best example, that have "perfect" fungibility. I.e. perfect modulo all audits of the code and all non-classified math available. Physical currency can never have this property, as an instance can always be altered in some way to make it unique. Digital sovereign fiat does not have this property, as any account balance has digital provenance, i.e. a record of all transactions, with counterparty information, from which that balance originated. While this record is not publicly available, there are parties that are privy to it, hence digital balances do not have perfect fungibility to those parties. Wstrong ( talk) 17:03, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
Now the Prehistory section is structured as follows:
It's hardly a coherent flow. Also, while I respect Aristotle as much as anyone, there certainly has been some progress in the history and anthropology since his times. Now the scholarly opinion has shifted from the barter as the main or sole predecessor to a more nuanced view involving gift exchange, credit, barter and the exogenous money created by the state. See for example the introduction in A Global History of Money by Akinobu Kuroda published in 2020.
I'd suggest to re-organise this section: start with an overview like in Kuroda's book, briefly describing barter, gift exchange, credit and the emergence of state money (thought that might belong to the next section). Finally I would note that historically the dominant view was that of Aristotle/Menger. Would love to hear feedback. Alaexis ¿question? 08:14, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
The history of money 103.30.198.139 ( talk) 08:37, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
original of money 196.249.96.40 ( talk) 21:23, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
Macrocompassion ( talk) 15:30, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
In this topic it is written that bank notes (and presumably, subsequent kinds of money) have a certain values. This is incorrect. These forms of money represent value, but these bits of paper and cheap metal discs and the electronic signatures in carefully protected files of money accounts) do not have values by themselves. So that when the money system of a country collapses, this money representative value gets lost.¬¬¬¬ ([[User talk:Macrocompassion]) 15:27, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
objectives of money 208.131.188.174 ( talk) 18:56, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
The article thoroughly mixes several definitions of money, without warning the reader that they come from very distinct and often opposite economic theories. It also gives undeserved weight to some marginal theories, like "Austrian Economics" and Graeber's theory of "Debt money". It should be reorganized and sectioned according to said schools. Jorge Stolfi ( talk) 12:05, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
The article assumes without evidence that prehistoric tally sticks were records of debt. (That is probably taken from Graeber's "money frmo debt" theory.) But tally sticks can be used to count many, many other things. Jorge Stolfi ( talk) 12:11, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
The article states that the shekel was "both a coin representing a specific weight of barley, and the weight of that sack of barley." But according to this article, the shekel was a unit of weight for metals, equivalent to about 11 grams -- like the modern "troy ounce". Thus a "silver shekel" was 11 grams of silver, usually in the form of a coin (a round ingot with government seal guaranteeing weight and purity); a "gold shekel" was 11 grams of gold. Neither "represented" anything; their value was the value of the metal. If there was a unit of weight of barley also called "shekel", it must have been a lot more than 11 grams... Jorge Stolfi ( talk) 16:29, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
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This article is conspicuously missing many examples of early money, such as the cowrie shells, and bronze imitations, which are widely regarded as the first true, standardized money. This brief Nova overview of the history of money is vastly superior to the current article, and wikipedia should aim to surpass it: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/moolah/history.html -- Qwasty 05:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
The use of types of "claim checks" or "claim tickets" made of paper, wood, bamboo, etc.. upon the stores of ancient city states' warehouses is what "commodity money" had been, not the use of commodities directly in barter. That section of the article should be made clearer. This was the evolutionary step between barter and the eventual use of metal tokens as the mediums of exchange. These warehouse "claim tickets" are what eventually evolved into the "Treasury notes" when city state warehouses evolved into State Treasuries and Banks. It stands to reason that the use of metal tokens was originally a type of security feature to eliminate counterfeiting of paper, wood, bamboo type of tokens because of the difficulty of mining and refining metal and making coins. There is no evidence that gold and silver were valuable in the sense that they are perceived today until these metals in the form of coins started being used as the medium of exchange. And a bit further, the invention of the ledger (in crude form), and money of account happened before money of exchange (paper/coin) was invented. Barter -> ledgers -> city states -> city state warehouses -> warehouse ledgers -> warehouse stores' claim tickets -> Treasuries & Banks -> State minted metal coins -> Treasury & Bank promissory notes. Christopher Theodore ( talk) 18:44, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
Please provide the empirical evidence for barter as mechanism of exchange. Smith and Ricardo can be forgiven since they had no ethnographic record of merit to consult. We now have an abundance of evidence from a wide of variety of cultures and oral reckoning of debt to provide goods, or service or labor-time in the future is the far more commmon form of regulating trade in pre-state social formations than barter. Barter is mostly mythos. But I appreciate that you recognize that Gold and Silver etc. have zero "intrinsic" worth - that all worth attributed to commodity money is a social convention and not intrinsic.
What does B.P. stand for? Can somone create a link and an explenation?
In the article:
"It is said that all gold found on earth (which forms approximately a single cube 20 m a side)".
Is that 20 meters or 20 miles?
I've added references to the cowrie shells and imitations to the "commodity money" section of the article. Feel free to elaborate on those if you have good historical sources (academic works, that is, not TV shows). I don't otherwise understand the general complaints above and below, as there is extensive and high quality discussion of coinage, commodity money, barter, and credit money. The credit money part is controversal, but not rubbish: More comments on that below.
Perhaps these complaints reflect that the article should have a better introduction. If people agree on this feel free to propose an introduction, or I will.
Meanwhile, I recommend removing the disclaimer that the article "needs attention" as it is an excellent, well above average article and readers shouldn't be discouraged from consulting it. -- 198.91.39.109 20:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
In the last section the following claim is made: "Also the French word for money, Argent, derives from the Greek άργυρος, and translates also to silver." Surely "argent" it is from Latin "argentum"? Does anybody know the etymology for certain? Rhyolite 23:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
The section on Credit Money in the article is largely rubbish.
There should be some mention of fractional reserve banking in the example section, since that's the only way a bank can lend out someone else's deposits. A 100% reserve would not permit the money to be loaned out without the permission of the owner.
The writer also neglects to mention that the writing of the cheque changes the ownership of the coins, so they are still only owned by one person - you should have them in your account when your cheque is cashed, since they no longer belong to you, so they should probably remain there for the short time until they are reallocated.
It is true that the loaned coins will probably wind up back in the bank again, allowing the reserve requirement to be met more easily, but those loaned coins being returned to not increase the levels of the reserves. I offer a (probably unnecessary) example.
Let's say that I am a very small bank. I have one dollar of deposits and the bank has a 50% reserve requirement, so I loan 50 cents of that dollar - the maximum at this reserve level, which returns to me as a deposit (best case scenario).
I still have only one real dollar in reality, but I now have $1.5 in deposits against 50 cents in loan. I can only lend another 25 cents before I meet my reserve limit. So I lend it, and it comes back in another deposit. Now I have $1.75 in deposits and 75 cents loaned out, but still only one dollar in balance. I can only lend 12.5 cents, etc. In reality, I can only have a maximum of 1 dollar loaned out for every 2 dollars in hand.
Ergo, that part of the Credit Money in this article is really about fractional reserve banking, is poorly written in either case, and should be either removed or moved to fractional reserve banking.
Also I propose the following for the opening paragraphs of that section...
Octothorn 12:28, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
198.91.39.109 20:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I propose deleting the section on credit money and replacing it with this:
Credit money often exists in conjunction with other money such as fiat money or commodity money, and from the user's point of view is indistinguishable from it. Most of the western world's money is credit money derived from national fiat money currencies.
In a modern economy, a bank will lend all but a small portion of its deposits to borrowers, this is known as [fractional reserve banking]. In doing so, it increases the total [money supply] above that of the total amount of the fiat money in existence (also known as M0). While a bank will not have access to sufficient cash (fiat money) to meet all the obligations it has to depositors if they wish to withdraw the balance of their cheque accounts (credit money), the majority of transactions will occur using the credit money (cheques and electronic transfers).
Strictly speaking a debt is not money, primarily because debt can not act as a unit of account. All debts are denominated in units of something external to the debt. However, credit money certainly acts as a substitute for money when it is used in other functions of money (medium of exchange and store of value).
Reasons: 1/There are other articles on money supply, fractional reserve banking etc, and I don't think we should replicate them all through wikipedia, just link to them. 2/The explanation of credit money was not good. 3/Other people appear to agree with me on at least point 3.
If anyone has concerns, suggestions or amendments, speak up and we can work on them. Otherwise I will make the change in a few days.
-- PatClay 22:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Changes made as no dissenting views were heard.
-- PatClay 17:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
PatClay -"A debt is not money. Debt can not act as a unit of account. All debts are denominated in units of something external to the debt"
I would disagree. Money is the debt in which other debts are denominated. The Canadian Dollar is a debt of the Federal Government that, as the national unit of account, is denominated in itself. Vilhelmo ( talk) 14:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I think we should explain clearly that barter has the problem of "double coincidents of wants". To solve that problem, people begin to obtain highly marketable goods for use as exchange medium. Competition naturally sets in as people attempt to discover which commodity functions the best as money. All throughout the world, precious metals, particularly gold, emerged as the best functioning money. The world wide gold standard was a naturally occuring phenomenon. In the 19th century, under this standard, prices were very stable, and the standard of living increased very rapidly.
Banks originate as a safe place to store gold, and the issure paper warehouse reciepts. Because (and only because) these reciepts are redeemable in gold, the paper notes are traded as money. Ludwig von Mises, through regression analysis, proved that money MUST originate as a valuable commodity.
Fractional reserve banking originates by bankers printing up "extra" reciepts, that is reciepts that are not backed by gold. It is counterfeiting with a fancy name. Bank runs are the market solution to this, and bankers hate bank runs, and turn to government to try and legitimize fractional reserve banking.
Governments sieze control of money in a 3 step process. 1) Monopolizing the minting of gold coins. This makes "coin clipping" (inflation) possible. 2) Monopolizing the printing of paper money, which is redeemable in gold. 3) Outlawing monetary gold, and requiring all people to accept paper money in payment of debt, regardless of what contracts may have required. (pure fiat money)
In general, I think the reader would appreciate understanding that gold is free market money, and that pure fiat money can only exist under force, not on a free market.
Comments?
TruthSeeker1234 05:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Utter garbage! Monetary systems have their origin in and are creations of government. Money was invented in the temple & palaces of Sumer as a unit of account to denominate debts (a credit system) as part of an administered price system. ALL money is debt and a unit of account. Gold is gold and any gold standard is a form of government price setting. Money existed prior to price setting markets.
What we call money is a transferable non-interest bearing debt of the federal government, created by the act of government spending and destroy by taxation. Every net dollar is a result of federal deficit spending. No deficit no net private savings. Vilhelmo ( talk) 10:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
Everything you said was incorrect myth & misinformation
See:
Modern Monetary Theory: A Primer
Vilhelmo (
talk) —Preceding
undated comment added
01:01, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Somtimes the history of monry is un-avalible because it never going to happen... 100 years from now and theirs going to be another and weirder history of money and we wont fully understand the first meaning...You see time just never waits...
I don't think conspiracy theorists are required here.
The Good article nomination for History of money has failed, for the following reason:
Following WP:WIAGA,
jwanders Talk 20:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
The use of proto-money may date back to at least 75,000 B.P., when shell necklaces were made in Blombos Cave in South Africa. These necklaces would have provided the basic attributes needed of early money. In cultures where metal working was unknown, shell or ivory jewelry were the most divisible, easily storable and transportable, scarce, and hard to counterfeit objects that could be made. It is highly unlikely that there were formal markets in 75,000 B.P (any more than there are in recently observed hunter-gatherer cultures). Nevertheless, proto-money would have been useful in reducing the costs of less frequent transactions that were crucial to hunter-gatherer cultures, especially bride purchase, splitting property upon death, tribute, and intertribal trade in hunting ground rights (“starvation insurance”) and implements. In the absence of a medium of exchange, all of these transactions suffer from the basic problem of barter -- they require an improbable coincidence of wants or events.
I deleted the paragraph above because of the bias inherant in the dating. Nobody really knows for a historical fact of any dates prior to about 4000 B.C., and thus, although citations may be available, confirmation is impossible. Jason Hommel 05:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The dates are based on radioisotope dating described in peer-reviewed literature, thus are well confirmed. So I'm reversing. What is the significance of 4,000 BC? 67.188.125.25 18:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I've also updated for the more recent discovery dating beads back to 100,000 BP, and added a link to the jewellery article which discusses historical and contemporary observations of monetary use of jewellery. 67.188.125.25 19:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
There needs to be a short explanation of "proto-money" when the word is first introduced.
This is difficult to read: Chinese produces metal imitations of cowrie shells and metal tools that may have been the precursors of coinage.. Changed, PWC
The paragraph after The following example illustrates this. is not written in an encylopedic tone and needs to be amended. I suggested substituting you for a third person example. The story is altogether told too colloqiually. Addressing the reader directly is often a poor practice.
The paragraph beginning with The word money in Greek language is confusing; please clarify it. Rintrah 07:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone even care about this article? I hope my copy-edits were not in vain. Rintrah 10:26, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I care. I think the subject is a pretty important one. I fixed one of your problems, I will have a look at the credit money part, the greek, well, that is over my head. Your work is appreciated. -- PatClay 17:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I cleaned up the grammar and phrasing in the sections on Indo-European and Semitic words and took out the sections of New Testament explanation which are only tangentially related to the topic. [[User:Womzilla|Womzilla], 2 Jan 2007.
The a article doesn't explain how money is created through debt. Brian Pearson 15:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
User Xicsies believes that the book of Revelation predicts that the " Mark of the Beast" will be a form of money, and that this should be included in the History of money article. User:Andrew c and I (-- Wragge 14:37, 16 November 2007 (UTC)) dispute this, and I'd like to request that Xicsies address our concerns before any further reverting or deleting take place. We feel that:
The argument so far given by Xicsies (in the summary history) for keeping this passage is that it wasn't challenged for twenty months. I'm sure we can find many articles containing irrelevant passages of personal views & original research with a longer lifetime: preserving them isn't Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia is inherently dynamic, so there's no possible argument from incumbancy.-- Wragge 14:37, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfx7rfr2_211crx6c26k Money-History, a very basic outside view point of money and its antecedents.
I would not call it a fringe view as that is negative in connotation. I think the article is better with this link in... as it gives some other aspects to the subject besides the mainstream that are interesting and thought provoking. The article is sourced in multiple ways and the basic history is interesting. skip sievert ( talk) 15:57, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
The site may not be added to the ELs. It is on Google Docs, meaning that it is a personally published work. Furthermore, it notes that it is taken from/associated with a blog on blogspot--and the EL policy clearly states that links to blogs are to be avoided. Carl.bunderson ( talk) 16:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Moreover, this is thinly veiled self-promotion, Skip. The link is being removed if it is there now, and your talk page has earned a spot on my watchlist. Carl.bunderson ( talk) 16:40, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Well you are entitled to your opinion... but I fail to see how that is self promotion. skip sievert ( talk) 16:43, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Ah ok. I read it and you are right. I will not do that in the future. I viewed it though as only information and was not thinking in terms of promotion, but I suppose it ultimately is. Thanks skip sievert ( talk) 17:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I was interested in looking up "money" because of its function as an abstract conceptualisation of value made concrete. I'm won't even try and say more! LoL I just wanted to see when the concept first emerged. When did the break with other forms of exchange and valuation e.g bartering happen and how did this relate to economic activity and "civilisation" generally? The dates etc given in the various articles here on Wiki differ widely and it seems that the subjects are being considered without reference to underlying concepts. For instance the article on Money identifies the use of gold bars by the Egyptians as a form of money when it is not at all clear that that was their function. Money, I would argue, is NOT simply an exchange item, it's a vehicle for valuation and converts real value (concrete and intangible) into objectivised and absolute value (abstract and tangible). The article on Economy dates the emergence of these ideas back to Aristotle in around 500 BC yet in Money the origins of money are put thousands of years earlier. It is very hard to see how the substance of a concept (money) can predate the existence of the concept itself. LookingGlass ( talk) 07:54, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
You might want to check this out Looking Glass. It is not a reference for wikipedia.... but contains I think a good time line and conceptualization frame work for money in general. http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfx7rfr2_211crx6c26k Money-History&Energy Accounting
Your right about the articles... they are a little conflicting and need more neutral and objective formatting and reference citations or footnotes, which I hope to contribute to. skip sievert ( talk) 20:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Noted. Agreed. The lead itself, links to the Money article, but uses a different definition than the lead there. Why? Christopher Theodore ( talk) 20:35, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Add articles here:
II | ( t - c) 10:35, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Good work Carl Bunderson, for quickly reverting the recent edits made by someone, trying to inject what could be viewed as religious opinions or beliefs ... for lack of a better term, into the article. skip sievert ( talk) 05:08, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Term is barely used today and various subsections are normally assigned to the other types of money. This is an accurate description of the term which the editor who insists on pushing this POV changed. The original diff here.
I removed a section on oche-as-money which was uncited, as well as a section mentioning jewelry-as-money where the cited article only mentioned jewelry as early trade goods. Here the cite doesn't support the conclusion given in the article.
The uncited sentences which follow also share the same problem of conflating trade with money.
The next sentence looks to Marcel Mauss for support, but the Google Books extract that I read doesn't support the broad conclusion stated in the WP article. The next sentence for which David Graeber is cited, starts with an unsupported premise "When barter in fact did occur..." and concludes with an "...it was usually between either complete strangers or would-be enemies." These seems to contradict other sources on the emergence of money. I will try to verify that article's conclusion is supported by the Graeber text, but it someone can do so sooner, please comment here. patsw ( talk) 12:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Graeber's work is supported by the historical evidence. There has been no documented society that used barter as its primary means of exchange & distribution neither between members of a single group nor as a means of trade between two or more distinct groups. It is derived axiomatically from first principles, not evidentially. Hatred of all & any form of government or public institution leads some to rule out by definition the possibility that the origins of money may lie in public institutions. The love of the "market", likewise, causes some to seek the origins of money there. Vilhelmo ( talk) 00:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I think this stuff about goldsmith banking is nonsense, I could not find any evidence for it. There are just some anti-Semitic stories circulating in the internet, trying to stress the role of goldsmiths in the history of banking, because "Goldsmith" is a common jewish name - and so people get the impression that it was all a jewish invention ... Forget this! Forget the idea that every goldsmith in the Middle-Ages had a big safe and lots of gold in it. This would have been much too risky. Forget the idea that a "goldsmith" worked only with gold - he worked as well with silver, copper and other materials, so there was no need to store more gold than he actually made use of. This stuff about goldsmith bankers should be deleted. -- Klingsor ( talk) 18:00, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Klingsor. The Goldsmith story is full of ideology. The crucial point is did Goldsmiths issue bills of exchange like ANY merchant, or did the Goldsmith use money stored for safe keeping as his own (fraud). I suspect the first case, but the opponents of fractional reserve banking ALWAYS start with the Goldsmith's tale to insinuate that banking is fraudulent. 182.52.196.140 ( talk) 11:18, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
The very first reliable source on Yworo's list states that Golsmiths BECAME bankers - they paid interest on gold deposited with them. In other words the gold was LENT to them and they were legally allowed to do whatever they like with it, including lend it out to others. This is very different from the story of the fraudulent warehouse receipts. 182.52.196.140 ( talk) 11:25, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Modern money (and most ancient money) is essentially a token — in other words, an abstraction. Paper currency is perhaps the most common type of physical money. However, objects of gold or silver present many of money's essential properties -- Largehole ( talk) 18:02, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
This article is so full of misinformation I'm not sure where to start. All money is a debt of the issuer, whether its stamp on metal, paper, wood, makes no difference at all. The history of coinage is not the same as the history of money. Vilhelmo ( talk) 03:21, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
- "but if I have some gold and go to the bank and get some money for it, where is the debt? What does selling gold or anything have anything to do with the nature of money?
-"because a state can't have any debt" What? Why would you think such a thing when a brief glance at reality proves it false?
The rest of your comment is gibberish. Vilhelmo ( talk) 14:13, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
If I possess a 10-euro note, who do I owe? Who owes me? If it is an asset to me, I can expect to exchange it on demand for gold or other goods and services. When I do so, I exchange one asset to another. That 10-euro note never becomes a thing that is promised to anyone else until I contract a good or service. D. F. Schmidt ( talk) 12:39, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
The allegedly Greek word in this section is not Greek. Not least because it has a Latin letter in it (the accented sigma, which perhaps is supposed to be an alpha?). It's not clear to me what the word is supposed to be anyway. A link to something like the Perseus on-line version of the Liddell and Scott lexicon would help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eponymous-Archon ( talk • contribs) 15:07, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
The first sentence contains a major error. It reads,
This is patently false. The history of money is not synonymous with the history of coinage. It is widely accepted that money originated as a unit of account in the public sector temples & palaces of bronze age Mesopotamia.
Sources:
Vilhelmo ( talk) 04:35, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
It should somehow be mentioned, that since the invention of paper money in China this "credit" was in fact a deposit (aka. "fund"), but no loan. The invention of loans came much later, after the money producing monopolists (i.e. banks) wanted to earn interest. However, nowadays the word "credit" usually means loan. This is probably also an issue of the English language because there is no common word used like fund (or "accompt"). So therefore I'd change the sentence: In this view, paper money emerged first as funds and only later acquired the functions of a medium of exchange and a store of value. That's exactly what happend in old China. It's quite unfortunate that in English the word credit is used for both loan and fund. Interestingly this may also be the reason why credit cards are much more popular in the English speaking regions. Language makes the people, deeply influencing their way of thinking - and their behaviour, too. -- 178.197.224.225 ( talk) 18:15, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
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“ | As early as 9000 BCE both grain and cattle were used as money or as barter (Davies) (the first grain remains found, considered to be evidence of pre-agricultural practice date to 17,000 BCE). [1] [2] [3] | ” |
There's a problem with this part of the Emergence of Money section. Davies's book is supposed to be the source on the existence of barter in 9000 BC but I've just checked the part of it dedicated to barter (pp 9-18) and there's no mention of it there (and has no concrete examples of barter anywhere else, for that matter). So either this information was taken from another source or it's not sourced at all. While the references look formidable, they lack page numbers which makes it hard to find what exactly do they say. Alæxis ¿question? 12:43, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I also find this section of the article to be confusing: it confuses barter with money in the opening sentence. Money is not just the use of *any* object as a medium of exchange, but the use of a thing without value (or very little value) as an abstract representation of other objects that have value. If an object has an inherent value (even if it is commonly traded), then it's not money or a monetary system, it is the barter system. Christopher Theodore ( talk) 20:54, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
“ | Anatolian obsidian as a raw material for stone-age tools was distributed as early as 15,000 BCE, with organized trade occurring in the 9th millennium. (Cauvin;Chataigner 1998) [4] In Sardinia, one of the four main sites for sourcing the material deposits of obsidian within the Mediterranean, trade in this was replaced in the 3rd millennium by trade in copper and silver. [5] [6] [7] | ” |
It's not clear how this passage is related to the topic of the article. Okay, trade existed in 15,000 BC and in 9,000 BC and in 3,000 BC, so what? It must've been quite a different trade compared to the modern one. Does it mean that money existed as well to facilitate that trade? If yes, it should be explained clearly in the article. It's hard to examine the provided sources since no page numbers are given and the second reference is a matryoshka one with four links to google books (actually there was also another one to Stephen King's Shawshank Redemption which I've just deleted).
I propose to remove this passage as it's not relevant to the topic of this article but would be happy to salvage something from it. I'll also try to look at the sources and try to see if they have something to do with money. Alæxis ¿question? 13:00, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
The earliest means of storage are thought to be money-boxes ( θησαυροί [1]) made similar to the construction of a bee-hive, [2] [3] as of the Mycenae tombs of 1550–1500 BCE. [4] [5] [6]
Couldn't find which source states that this was the earliest means of storage and it's not even clear what was stored there. It seems unlikely since silver and gold had been in use before those times and probably had had to be stored somewhere. I suggest to remove the passage unless its relevance is established and sources fixed. Alæxis ¿question? 13:12, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
The article's structure is not up to the standard of an encyclopedia. The sections start in chronological order and then become just a laundry list of various types of money. The scope of the article is not clear - it is about the "broad money" or just physical objects (in my opinion the former option is preferable). There is a lot of unsourced claims - I dealt with a couple of the most appalling ones but that's just a tip of the iceberg.
To start improving the article its structure should be agreed on. Since this is an article about the history of money the chronological order would probably be most uncontroversial and convenient.
Glyn Davies uses the following periodisation: 3000BC-600BC; 600BC-410AD; 410-1485; 1485-1640; 1640-1789; 1789-1914; 1914-now)
Jack Weatherford's one is: before 600BC; 600BC-200BC; 200BC-1300AD; 1300-1450; 1450- ... These two books are too Eurocentric for my liking, couldn't find anything on Chinese paper currency there for example Davies's book actually deals with Chinese paper money.
David Kroeber in his book about the history of debt divides the history into the Axial Age (800BC-600AD), Middle Ages (600-1450) and Age of Empires (1450-1971) What are other good and recent overview books on the subject? Alæxis ¿question? 20:02, 16 June 2017 (UTC) So a possible periodisation could be something along the lines of
I've reordered the information here, feel free to check it out. Disclaimer: I haven't changed the content so there are some repetitions and awkwardness and the problems with sources remain, so it's just to get the impression of a new approach. Alæxis ¿question? 21:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
I have finally changed the article as proposed earlier (for now only the first half, before the Trade Bills of Exchange section). Feedback is definitely welcome, specifically whether I missed something important from the old article, comments on the new structure, what else should be included. Alaexis ¿question? 10:46, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
The confusion in the article of what is properly still the barter system, with the use of abstract representations of value as mediums of exchange aka money (money of exchange or money of account), must be eliminated. Barter should be mentioned because it is an evolutionary step in the History of Money, but the distinction must be clarified. This confusion taints the lead and the article.
I think we can all agree in light of the evidence (and lack of it) that the true invention of money and its origins in history can be said to precede written history. Thus, we are left with making presumptions (and do note the subtle distinction between a "presumption" and an "assumption").
There has been some debate about which came first, money of account or money of exchange. Again, this precedes written history. We do find written evidence of ancient historians speculating on the origins of money along these lines. So even they were not quite sure... and made presumptions.
We also find that the use of money of exchange in the form of tokens made of paper, wood, bamboo, shells, etc.. as types of “warehouse claim tokens” for goods stored in the ancient city states’ warehouses occurred long before people started mining and refining gold & silver and striking coins. These tokens represented goods stored in the warehouses (like grain), and it was the goods in the warehouses that were valuable, not the tokens. The token could be exchanged in the barter markets as if they were a bag of the grain only because the token could be taken to the warehouse and traded for a bag of grain.
It stands to reason that the use of metal tokens ([bronze], gold, and silver coin) as the medium of exchange was turned to originally as a type of security feature to hinder counterfeiting of the warehouse claim tokens because of the difficulty of mining and refining it, not because it was scarce or inherently valuable. In fact, there is no evidence that gold & silver became valuable in the modern sense until being used by the ancient city states as the medium of exchange aka money of exchange.
It also stands to reason that, even older than the invention of money of exchange in any form, is the invention of the ledger in very crude forms ( tally sticks & hash marks), and the presumption should be that the oldest form of money is most likely money of account — credits & debts on a ledger representing something of value, or something of value owed.
This presumption becomes even stronger when we consider how the warehouses of small townships or tribes would naturally be created and those responsible for managing them would start doing things before the invention of money of exchange. Tally sticks would work fine for small community but with a large city state you can see how quickly it would become an accounting nightmare especially with such crude ledgers (which gives birth to the need for money of exchange and evolutions of the ledger).
Consider this line of reason and the presumption it gives rise to, supports, and strengthens:
I find support lacking for the CURRENT PRESUMPTION (more of an assumption, in fact) that dominates this article, and that presumption is that money of exchange was invented first. The use of an abstract token representing stored goods in a warehouse is a much more complicated series of thoughts than making hash marks on a tally stick. And the confusion of the barter system with the use of money is not justification of the presumption that things commonly bartered constituted the invention of "money" in it's true sense.
Further, we have evidence of the existence of the tally stick in conjunction with the reasoning presented above supporting the presumption that money of account is the oldest form of money... and further, that this gave rise to the invention of money of exchange. Christopher Theodore ( talk) 22:19, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
<<Outdent| @
ChristopherTheodore: Looking back at the start of this section and the associated edit I find we are less in agreement than I thought.
You wrote on 2017-12-13: "
money of account (debits and credits on ledgers) and
money of exchange (tangible mediums of exchange representing value made from wood, paper, bamboo, metal, etc..)"
I am content with your 'money of' terminology but don't think your definitions are quite right. 'Money of account' is records of credit and debt but not necessarily on ledgers, it can also take the form of tokens made from wood, paper, bamboo, metal, clay, any kind of IOU, receipt, credit note, bank note, etc. Whereas 'money of exchange' is a commodity of 'intrinsic' value which is used as a proxy in barter and has no associated debt/credit.
I do not think it can be said that 'money of account' led to 'money of exchange', they are quite different concepts and developed to meet different needs. Unfortunately, much historical writing has been premised on the assumption that all money is 'money of exchange' and has shoehorned everything into that framework. 'Representative money' is one example of such shoehorning. I think this article is still riddled with it, including your sterling efforts I'm sorry to say.
Wingsail (
talk)
01:44, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
Now I think I see a way forward here.
We are dealing with two basic kinds of money which developed in parallel, not from each other, for two different purposes.
I suggest that this article therefore needs two Histories of Money.
Money of account developed from simple debt/credit relations within groups. It is manifested in myriad forms of (usually valueless) token and ledger. Barter played essentially no role in this story.
Money of exchange, in contrast, is all about barter between groups. It is manifested in pieces of a valuable commodity.
At present we have these two stories hopelessly tangled and confused.
Wingsail (
talk)
01:34, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
Unless the unit of something owed was a unit of currency, it continues to be barter. And why would anyone bother to be the first to say "I'll give you these five ears of corn for a chip of gold. Now you owe me one chip of gold?" D. F. Schmidt ( talk) 12:44, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
If their is a source for Graeber claiming this is how money developed then it should be included - perhaps explicitly stating that it's Graeber's theory. What do the other sources claim on this matter?
Jonpatterns (
talk)
10:56, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
I have taken it upon myself to modify the opening paragraph to remove what I perceive as ideological bias. I have also added a sub-section alerting the reader to the ideological tension inherent in this topic. This may deserve a box of some kind? I am largely in agreement with the comments of Vilhelmo and Christopher Theodore above and, in lieu of wholesale neutralising, I think some sort of heads-up is warranted. Wingsail ( talk) 18:28, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
I have removed the emphasis on medium of exchange, which is a feature of the commodity theory, from the opening paragraph. Credit theory regards unit of account as more fundamental and I don't think we want to have to reiterate the whole of the functions of money page here just to maintain balance. Wingsail ( talk) 14:32, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Theories of money would be better treated as its own article. Both the theory and history of money are quite involved - and although there is overlap they will be more clear as separate articles. Jonpatterns ( talk) 11:25, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
I would like to draw all editors attention to this article by Tim Harford -- who writes the Financial Times's Undercover Economist column -- which summarizes Julius Jordan & Denise Schmandt-Besserat work.
Julius & Denise are the 2 main players in anthropology involved with early forms of cuneiform accounting and clay tokens used as money.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39870485 — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChristopherTheodore ( talk • contribs) 21:02, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
It seems worth pointing out some of the properties of cryptocurrencies that seem to be unique in the history of money. I am not adding these yet, because I'm not knowledgeable enough about the history of money to know if these are actually unique. Please weigh-in if you have such knowledge.
- Cryptocurrencies may be the first instance in history of a money being adopted that has zero non-monetary value (even paper money has monetary value, e.g. burning it as fuel), yet it's value isn't imposed or bootstrapped by any state or external power or mandate. Put differently, they may be the first currencies in history to bootstrap value and acceptance without any non-monetary value or authority to seed the bootstrapping process.
- There are anonymous cryptocurrencies, ZCash being the best example, that have "perfect" fungibility. I.e. perfect modulo all audits of the code and all non-classified math available. Physical currency can never have this property, as an instance can always be altered in some way to make it unique. Digital sovereign fiat does not have this property, as any account balance has digital provenance, i.e. a record of all transactions, with counterparty information, from which that balance originated. While this record is not publicly available, there are parties that are privy to it, hence digital balances do not have perfect fungibility to those parties. Wstrong ( talk) 17:03, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
Now the Prehistory section is structured as follows:
It's hardly a coherent flow. Also, while I respect Aristotle as much as anyone, there certainly has been some progress in the history and anthropology since his times. Now the scholarly opinion has shifted from the barter as the main or sole predecessor to a more nuanced view involving gift exchange, credit, barter and the exogenous money created by the state. See for example the introduction in A Global History of Money by Akinobu Kuroda published in 2020.
I'd suggest to re-organise this section: start with an overview like in Kuroda's book, briefly describing barter, gift exchange, credit and the emergence of state money (thought that might belong to the next section). Finally I would note that historically the dominant view was that of Aristotle/Menger. Would love to hear feedback. Alaexis ¿question? 08:14, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
The history of money 103.30.198.139 ( talk) 08:37, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
original of money 196.249.96.40 ( talk) 21:23, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
Macrocompassion ( talk) 15:30, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
In this topic it is written that bank notes (and presumably, subsequent kinds of money) have a certain values. This is incorrect. These forms of money represent value, but these bits of paper and cheap metal discs and the electronic signatures in carefully protected files of money accounts) do not have values by themselves. So that when the money system of a country collapses, this money representative value gets lost.¬¬¬¬ ([[User talk:Macrocompassion]) 15:27, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
objectives of money 208.131.188.174 ( talk) 18:56, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
The article thoroughly mixes several definitions of money, without warning the reader that they come from very distinct and often opposite economic theories. It also gives undeserved weight to some marginal theories, like "Austrian Economics" and Graeber's theory of "Debt money". It should be reorganized and sectioned according to said schools. Jorge Stolfi ( talk) 12:05, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
The article assumes without evidence that prehistoric tally sticks were records of debt. (That is probably taken from Graeber's "money frmo debt" theory.) But tally sticks can be used to count many, many other things. Jorge Stolfi ( talk) 12:11, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
The article states that the shekel was "both a coin representing a specific weight of barley, and the weight of that sack of barley." But according to this article, the shekel was a unit of weight for metals, equivalent to about 11 grams -- like the modern "troy ounce". Thus a "silver shekel" was 11 grams of silver, usually in the form of a coin (a round ingot with government seal guaranteeing weight and purity); a "gold shekel" was 11 grams of gold. Neither "represented" anything; their value was the value of the metal. If there was a unit of weight of barley also called "shekel", it must have been a lot more than 11 grams... Jorge Stolfi ( talk) 16:29, 17 February 2024 (UTC)