Uncommon coin - The Fortunes of Money

A variety of unusual objects have been used since ancient times to finance trade and cement political and social life NECKLACES or bracelets of shells, pearls, teeth, bones or feathers, fragments of stone or metal, pottery, pieces of cloth, and other unlikely objects are labelled as primitive money" in many museum collections and ethnographical or archaeological publications.

Other apparently similar objects are described as ornaments or jewellery, although there is no evidence to prove that they were used for display rather than as money. Their degree of preservation, which suggests that they were highly valued by their owners, together with physical characteristics indicating a non-utilitarian purpose, may have led archaeologists and students of prehistory to attribute a purely decorative function to these treasures which in fact were also used as money.

Money in ancient civilizations Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle observed that before coins were used people gave things that they possessed in abundance in exchange for things they lacked. This practice was known as metadosis. Ethnologists have described how very ancient yet strongly hierarchical societies used complex exchange systems such as the kula of the western Pacific, the bilaba and the malaki of central Africa and the potlatch of the northwest coast of North America.

Money, like relationships involving hierarchy and domination, is thus not a modern invention. It was a feature of even more ancient civilizations than those of the Mediterranean basin, of the Near or the Far East, or of Central America. The circulation of precious objects within and between these communities seems to have been universal, and in a sense to foreshadow the functions of money as a medium of exchange and as a unit of account.

But in such ancient societies these basic functions had not yet become purely economic. They were an emanation of kinship systems and political alliances, beliefs and cults, which influenced the supply of labour, organized production and justified the distribution of wealth.

Money, or in this case "palaeomoney", was the active instrument of social life. It was used at times of birth, marriage and mourning, to declare war and make peace, as compensation for physical or moral wrongs, and as a means of propitiating the gods of fertility and death. On the other hand, it was not yet used to pay debts or wages or to buy goods.

The scarcity and lack of intrinsic usefulness which characterize palaeomoney are typical of some modern forms of money. Palaeomoney also anticipated the economic and political nature of modern currencies, on the one hand by setting a value on different activities and material goods and thus foreshadowing today's standardized methods of payment, on the other by reflecting and reinforcing the hierarchical power relations between individuals and groups.

Better than barter

The exchange systems of these ancient communities were thus much more complex than that of a simple barter economy.

From very early times, commodities circulated over great distances. Specimens of durable materials such as amber and obsidian have been found hundreds of kilometres from their place of origin, distances as great as that from southern Australia to the northern coasts of New Guinea, and from the Black Sea to Poland and the Rhineland. As early as the Upper Palacolithic Period (35,000-10,000 years ago), Cro-Magnon man in the Dordogne area of southern France was using shells brought from the Atlantic ocean, 200 kilometres away.

At a later stage different societies came to specialize in the production of a particular item for exchange and as a means of payment for produce acquired from other groups. Examples of such commodities are stone axes, bars of salt, pottery and bark cloaks. Later still, groups specializing in trade emerged within these societies and travelled tens or even hundreds of kilometres in the course of their activities.

This is far removed from a barter economy, where goods are exchanged directly, without any intermediate transaction. However, the development of an objective system for measuring value was still limited. The price of the goods exchanged was primarily the expression of a social relationship between individuals and communities. The marketplace was not yet the driving force behind monetary development.

The first coins

The use of money grew rapidly with the development of states, which managed the surplus wealth created by the exploitation of slaves, serfs or peasants, by long-distance trade or the despoliation of neighbouring peoples. Tributes and taxes began to be evaluated and methods of payment for trade in markets and ports began to be standardized.

Among the wide range of commodities which served as money in ancient societies-the pieces of cloth and cocoa beans of the Maya and Aztec empires, the cowrie shells and gold of the West African kingdoms, the bean-shaped ingots of the Greek cities, the iron bars of the Hittites, the barley and wheat of Mesopotamia, the wheat and copper of Egypt, the millet and silks of Chinacoins are of particular interest because their use has continued to the present day.

At first, coins were only one form of metal currency. Before coins circulated in China, and even after they were introduced in the late fourth century BC, small-scale replicas of spades and knives were used as money. The first coins were struck in the seventh century BC in Asia Minor and in Greece, where some cities were still using bean-shaped ingots. Small silver ingots punched with a variety of motifs were used as currency in India from the same period until coins were introduced there in the fourth century BC.

The influence of Greece

The cities of ancient Greece played a crucial role in the history of coinage. For centuries the Greek numismatic tradition was widely propagated, either directly or through a complex network of influences. In the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great, whose troops seized precious metal from the treasuries of Near-Eastern potentates and turned it into coinage, Greek coins were widely distributed in the Mediterranean were wi countries.

The Romans, who initially used bronze ingots like those of the Etruscans, minted their first coins in the third century BC under the influence of the Greek cities of southern Italy. Roman colonization led to the use of coinage to an extent unmatched until the European colonial expansion of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Beyond the eastern frontiers of the Roman empire, between Khorasan and Mesopotamia, the Sasanian dynasty continued a numismatic tradition that displayed a strong Hellenistic influence and had been transmitted by the Parthians, whose empire (founded between the third and the second century BC) stretched at its height from the Euphrates to Afghanistan. This Hellenistic tradition also influenced early Islamic coins, while the Roman tradition was carried on in Christian Europe.

A similar process occurred in India, which was subject to waves of Greek influence both direct and indirect, from the arrival of Alexander's troops and contact with the Roman empire to Muslim and European colonization.

The ritual significance

of coins

In all these civilizations, coins were not immediately seen as a monetary instrument superior to other accepted methods of payment, with which they long coexisted. Metal discs, more or less well-stamped, could be used in all kinds of ways.

When they changed hands it signified more than just a commercial transaction-it could symbolize an exchange of gifts or even tribute.

The first coins of the Greek cities were thus not issued as a direct response to commercial requirements. Their value was too high to pay for everyday goods in the marketplace. In long-distance transactions, carried out largely by sea, the goods themselves were the means of payment. What then was the original function of these coins? At first it seems that they were needed in dealings within and between the Greek cities, and above all they had a political and religious function.

This dual role was not however an obstacle to the use of coins in commerce. The metal of which they were made had itself been the object of long-distance transactions since very ancient times, when trade had important political and social overtones. The flexibility allowed by weighed pieces of metal which could be divided into small units, and their distribution in societies with widely different customs, gradually established them as the preferred method of trading and of paying taxes in the ancient world.

Coins stamped with the images of gods and rulers kept their essentially political function until the Roman era, when they were issued to commemorate public games or military campaigns. The sacrificial and ritual significance of coins persists even today, as when they are buried in the foundations of buildings and bridges or flung into fountains and wells as propitiatory offerings, used symbolically to reinforce marriage contracts, or placed in the mouths or hands of the dead so that they can pay their way in the next world.

COPYRIGHT 1990 UNESCO
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