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Author Topic: Was coinage invented before coinage?  (Read 698 times)

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Offline gallienus1

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Was coinage invented before coinage?
« on: January 25, 2021, 07:41:03 am »
Books on the history of money usually cite Lydia as having produced the earliest coinage.

However, you could define a coin as a piece of metal created and issued by some authority, to use as a convenient medium of payment for goods. So even if an object lacks a round disk shape, if it serves the same purpose of as a coin, and is portable like coin, then it is acting as money and should be considered a coin, or at least a proto-coin. The well known bronze spade, knife, and cowrie money that was produced in ancient China well before the Lydian and Ionian electrum coins of about 600 BC could be considered such proto-coinage.

Now according to a paper by Maikel H. G. Kuijpers and Cătălin N. Popa, published on the 20th of January 2021, people of the early European  Bronze Age (3,200-1,700 BC) traded items so alike in appearance and weight that it suggests that they may be a form of "commodity money". This commodity money, or perhaps proto-coinage, was in the form of standardized bronze ribs, rings, and axe blades.

The researchers think these monetary like properties helped to drive the development of more accurate weights and scales to properly measure how heavy or light something was – and therefore how much it might be worth.

See-
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240462

Offline Virgil H

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Re: Was coinage invented before coinage?
« Reply #1 on: January 25, 2021, 11:11:48 pm »
I am really not sure what the earliest money was because you could basically say barter involved some form of exchange of worth for worth, say between chickens and bushels of wheat. Livestock had value. Was it money? Maybe not, but also maybe because people still count their wealth on livestock in places. Cowrie shells were in use as money in 2000 BC or before and were still in use in the 1960s and may still be in some places. I would call a cowrie shell coinage in very broad terms. I understand that people will disagree. But, is there really a difference between a shell and a lump of metal?

Virgil

Offline gallienus1

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Re: Was coinage invented before coinage?
« Reply #2 on: January 26, 2021, 12:01:27 am »
Hi Virgil.

The point is that a cowrie shell has value because it is hard to get, beautiful to look at and easily transported. But it is not all that long lasting and cowries vary in size, weight and aesthetic appeal. So they are a reasonable medium of exchange, but one with limitations important enough I would argue to prevent them being coinage. When the Chinese cast bronze cowrie shells they had a medium of exchange that was far more long lasting and they could standardize the size and weight making the calculation of relative worth far easier.

Many numismatists today would argue standardized bronze cowrie shells and European early Bronze Age cast rings are proto-coins representing proto-money. I think that because the shapes and weights were standardized and they are found in hoards in areas where trade was known to have taken place they must have been used as actual money, and as a consequence they represented early coinage.

If you consider that the definition of a coin is that it not only must have a standard size and weight, but must also be in the shape of a round disc, then you would have to concede an oval Japanese Tenpō Tsūhō, the Cook Islands circulating 2 dollar triangular coin and both the square Netherlands zinc 5 cent coin of World War II and the ancient Maurya Empire silver coins were also not coins. Which is clearly not the case.

The interesting point in the research paper is it looks like there was an understanding in early Bronze Age Europe that to be used as a efficient means of exchange an item had to be durable and standardized in shape and weight. Which means around 4,000 years ago some Europeans had already understood the concept of money.

Steve

Offline JBF

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Re: Was coinage invented before coinage?
« Reply #3 on: January 26, 2021, 10:46:30 am »
Isidore of Seville (7th c. AD?) talked about a coin as having weight, metal, and stamp [or emblem, badge, something like that]. circularity is nice, because then they don't poke you, but it is not essential.

You might look into "odd and curious money."

"proto-coin represents proto-money"  you might try to unpack that and say it in some other way.

Offline Robert_Brenchley

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Re: Was coinage invented before coinage?
« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2021, 04:38:21 pm »
All sorts of things have been used. In Sierra Leone it was kola nuts, and a bribe is still 'kola' to this day.
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Offline Virgil H

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Re: Was coinage invented before coinage?
« Reply #5 on: January 26, 2021, 05:41:14 pm »
Hi gallienus and JBF,

I would totally agree with what you said. I approach this topic from an anthropologist perspective perhaps much more than numismatic I suppose. As you said, the word coin has a specific meaning. I am looking at this as an issue of money. The dictionary definition of money I am not a fan of: "a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes; coins and banknotes collectively."

The Wikipedia definition I much prefer: "Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment. Any item or verifiable record that fulfils these functions can be considered as money."

Coins are a subset of money. And, as an aside, banknotes have no actual value unless tied to something like gold. They have symbolic value defined by the state, but unless price controls are in place, even bronze coins have no real actual value since prices are haggled over.

Given that people have been trading for as long as people have been around, I think money has been around forever. Maybe this isn't a good way to look at it and I am open to being wrong. The native Americans trading obsidian for dried salmon had some concept of the value of each. Cowrie shells may not have been coins, but they were money.

I hope I haven't taken this thread too off-topic.

Virgil

 

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