A brief history of money from ancient times to the present day

And until now, the names of many world currencies are old weight measures of loose bodies, which says a lot. It is noteworthy that even modern man, under certain conditions, returns to the use of commodity money. As soon as the established way of life is shaken, the most reliable currencies are not the dollar and the euro, but tea, salt and sugar. In ancient times, metals turned out to be an extremely convenient commodity, the ingots of which were much easier to handle than sacks of grain and herds of cattle. Before the appearance of the usual coins, one step remained to be taken - to ensure the uniformity of the monetary units in circulation (mass and purity of the metal). This is how the minting of coins appeared.

Beginning of minting When we talk about money, we primarily mean trade. However, the fact that the state had to collect taxes played an equally important role in monetary history, and here coins turned out to be extremely convenient. The first coins in the usual sense for us were minted in the 7th century BC in the state of Lydia, located on the territory of modern Turkey. At first, Lydian coins were minted from electrum (a natural alloy of gold and silver), and then silver and gold appeared separately.

The Lydian king Croesus was the first to establish a standard for the purity of the precious metal in his coin and to authenticate it with the royal seal. Lydian staters quickly spread across the Mediterranean, and humanity entered the era of money. It is noteworthy that the first coins were originally gold, which means they were by no means “cheap”. This is another argument in favor of the fact that they were intended not for buying fish at the market, but for paying taxes (at once for the whole year) and wholesale trade. However, civilization quickly came to the understanding that small money is also needed. For example, along with the staters mentioned above, coins of 1/2 stater, 1/4 stater, and further up to 1/24 stater went around the ancient world. These coins were already ideal for ancient Greek shopping.