First money
Money is a means of carrying out exchange relations, a universal equivalent. In ancient times, the role of money was played by various goods (skins of animals, grain, cattle), gradually it passed to noble metals (gold, silver), which best meet the requirements of payment for goods. The Russian word “money” itself goes back to the Turkic “denga” and denotes the weight measurement of objects among the Mongols and Turks. There was a lot of money during the period of the Mongol yoke in Rus’, for example, Dmitry Donskoy, Vasily the Dark, Nizhny Novgorod, Novgorod-Severskaya, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan, Starodub, Tver, Yaroslavl, etc. These coins were often minted in two fonts — Old Russian and Arabic.
For example, the Latin word pecunia — money comes from pecus — cattle. In the poems of Homer (VIII — VII centuries BC), the bull appears as a measure of value. Golden armor, for example, cost 100 bulls. Cattle were counted by head, and the Latin word caput — head was the basis of the modern words “capital”, “capitalism”. The word “cattle” denoted the concepts of money, property, wealth. Similarly, they were designated by the Anglo-Saxons — sceat, ready — skatts, in the ancient German language — skat. In Rus’, “cattle” is not only domestic animals, but also property, wealth, money. However, cattle was not the only type of money, and along with it, a wide variety of items served as ancient money: furs, skins, fabrics, various utensils, shells, beads and other jewelry, salt, fish, tea and many other items. Among the various types of primitive money, the shells of a small mollusk, mined in the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans, were especially popular — kauri. From ancient times and in a number of places until the 20th century. they were used as ornaments and were a means of exchange among many peoples of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands.
Furs were also very widely used as a general equivalent. This use of them in Ancient Rus’ is evidenced by some names of monetary units — kuna, veveritsa. In North America, furs were used as money as early as the beginning of the 18th century.
With the expansion of exchange to perform the function of a universal equivalent, a special commodity appeared, by its very nature most suitable for this purpose — noble metals. They very quickly forced out various types of non-metallic money from circulation. Initially, gold and silver were exchanged simply by weight in the form of bullion.
The transition from the use of money in the form of ingots of the most diverse form (bars, rods, rings, etc.) to minted coins was the result of an increase in production to a higher level, when exchange became vital for economically advanced countries and peoples.
Metal money practically did not deteriorate and could be stored as a treasure for an arbitrarily long time. In addition, having a large weight in a small volume, they greatly facilitated their transportation. Finally, they were easily divided into parts, turning into money of lesser value, which made it very easy to carry out small trading operations. In many countries, the circulation of various types of metallic money, primarily ingots, preceded the appearance of actual coins. In Greece, before the introduction of the coin, iron rods called obols were in circulation. Six rods made up a drachma (bundle, handful). Drachma subsequently became known as the ancient Greek silver coin. In ancient Italy, before the advent of coins, copper ingots served as money, in large numbers (about 300 kg) found in the healing sacred spring Aqua Apollinaris — Water of Apollo.
“Netherlands archaeologists, who studied the contents of many ancient treasures, came to the conclusion that bronze objects were used as the first money in Europe in the Early Bronze Age. The results of the study were published in the journal PLUS ONE.
