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 Replies: 15 / Views: 1,574 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Fun idea for a thread.
Humans first discovered metal in the form of free copper, in several independent phases between about 9,000 BC and 2,000 BC. Bronze was discovered via the infusing of arsenic, then tin or zinc, into copper. The warming climate facilitated agriculture, which freed up time to develop bronze technology and organized government. Thus, the bronze age started independently in the Middle East and China (and possibly India as well). Social stratification led to the development of the concept of "treasure"--otherwise useless objects that are prized for rare materials and extremely fine workmanship.
For a few good thousand years, all trade took place initially through direct barter, then through commodity money to stand in place of a good or service. It wasn't until about 700-600 BC that cultures decided to use treasure for money--using weighted standard weights of gold, silver, or bronze to stand in for specific measures of value. There were three independent inventions of coins:
Lydia (and the Mediterranean world) begang using struck pieces of gold and silver, bearing an image of the government to guarantee its content and value.
India began using punch-marked pieces of metal for the same purpose.
China morphed it's commodity money of farm equipment (knives and spades) into symbolic (not useful as tools) forms, eventually adding characters.
It seems very curious that after thousands of years of metallurgy, no one thought to use metal discs of fixed weight instead of cowrie shells or beads or measures of grain and beer.
So, for the purposes of this thread, let's pretend that someone got that bright idea before 700 BC. What ancient civilization would you most like to be able to add to your collection of bona fide coins?
Personally, I would love to see what the Mayans, Aztecs, or Inca could have come up with. They all had knowledge of and access to gold, despite technically being stone age civilizations. The Mayans in particular had a fully developed writing system, and an obsession with making full use of the most accurate functional civic calendar ever devised by mankind. How cool would it be to have a Mayan gold coin to commemorate a king's victory in battle over a rival king on October 18, 157 BC?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7066 Posts |
I'm with you on the Mayans. They would have minted some interesting stuff - perhaps resembling some of the blockier versions of the Ceylon "octopus man" coins (some of which I think have imagery like Mayan art).
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Moderator
 United States
23731 Posts |
For me it would be Egypt. The really never developed a monetary system.
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
6130 Posts |
Interestingly, if memory serves, some ancient Egyptian illustrated Heiroglyphs depict weighing cetrain objects against gold rings, and written sources indicate that there was a formalized relationship between precious and non-precious metals: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static.../weight.htmlIt actually astounds me that they did not produce any coinage until the Greek takeover. (I heard that there was an R5 coin from the period of Persian control?) |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
513 Posts |
The Mayans (or any other Mesoamerican civilization) because it would have been interesting to see how another monetary system developed with no contact with any other monetary civilizations.
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Moderator
United States
34428 Posts |
The Picts. It seems to me like any group that can pretty much defeat the Romans and lived up until the 900s ought to have some coins.
"If you climb a good tree, you get a push."
-----Ghanaian proverb
"The danger we all now face is distinguishing between what is authentic and what is performed."
-----King Adz
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Moderator
Australia
16852 Posts |
Quote:
It seems very curious that after thousands of years of metallurgy, no one thought to use metal discs of fixed weight instead of cowrie shells or beads or measures of grain and beer.
It's not really all that odd a concept. The barter system is one that is easy to understand and has been invented and reinvented countless times throughout history: I have these and don't need them, you have those and don't need them, so let's swap. "Money" is any object created specifically for use as a medium of exchange to facilitate trade. Thus, money is a more abstract concept, because it is, fundamentally, something nobody actually needs yet everybody can be persuaded to want. A successful monetary system needs to be widely accepted (so having the government control the issuing and value helps), convenient (less cumbersome than swapping cows, or eggs, or whatever) and secure (difficult to counterfeit or steal). Metal fulfils all these criteria so does make for a good medium to make money out of, but the problem with metal is that it's simply too darned useful for most primitive societies to "waste" it on making money. Its invention thus needed to wait until a civilization arose that is rich and prosperous enough and geographically situated so that it has more metal than it knew what to do with. So we find it invented by the Lydians, who had a river full of electrum, and by the Chinese, who had plenty of copper left over once everybody had enough tools and weapons. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
Russian Federation
5177 Posts |
I agree on the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas (and all the other assorted Native Americans - Toltec, Chimu, Zapotec, Cherokee... but those three especially).
Polynesians too, but they were generally lacking in metals, so I'm not sure what they'd make their coins out of (IOTL, as far as I understand, they were the ones that introduced the cowrie shells to everyone else, and tried to make stone coins on Yap but it didn't really work out).
To continue on the Egypt idea, I'd say Assyria (and Babylon).
Asshurbanipal and, especially, Nebuchadnezzar lived late enough that they might well have seen some coins personally (or at least have heard of them) - yet it apparently never occurred to them to make coins of their own.
(Okay, okay, I just wanted to see coins with cuneiform legends. Did anybody ever make any?)
For what it's worth, as already mentioned by Finn235, Egypt did, as far as I know, use "standard weights of gold and silver" as measures of value well before 700 BC. (So did Assyria, I think, but I've got confirmation about Egypt from an actual Egyptologist, so I'm more certain about that part.) I'm not sure why such things don't seem to ever be considered coins.
Weird answer: Russian principalities (and the Slavic tribes that preceded them, I suppose).
There's a brief issue from the 11th century - and that mostly during the fairly brief period when the country was actually mostly united - and nothing else until the 14th.
There's nothing from Vladimir-Suzdal, which is a fascinating part of Russian history; and, as far as I know, none of the twenty-odd Russian princes mentioned in Lay of Igor's Campaign ever produced any coins either.
I know why, of course - not enough silver around - but I really want such coins to exist anyway.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
I had actually forgotten about the Rai stones on Yap--they are generally accepted as an independent invention of the "coin" as well.
They actually did work very well. The truly valuable stones were the ones that were nearly impossible to move, and the number of sailors that died in the journey added to the value additonally. The Europeans messed things up when they started to quarry the stones for the natives. Then the Japanese occupied the island in WWII and realized they make fantastic boat anchors. I have read that the stones are still used for ceremonial or important purchases on the island to this day.
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Valued Member
United States
152 Posts |
Sumerians of Mesopotamian. Their codification of "writing" via cueniform would have been easily leveraged onto metal or precious metal disks.
Maybe even some pedestrian "clay coins" long long long before Germany / Portugal did it in the 1920s, and then Japan in 1945.
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Pillar of the Community
Russian Federation
5177 Posts |
Quote:
Sumerians of Mesopotamian. Their codification of "writing" via cueniform would have been easily leveraged onto metal or precious metal disks.
Maybe even some pedestrian "clay coins" long long long before Germany / Portugal did it in the 1920s, and then Japan in 1945. Yeah, those guys were all over their cylinder seals. (The cuneiform didn't really work very well for writing on metal though.) I could easily imagine Sumerian clay counting tokens being developed into actual value tokens - essentially fiat money - way back in the 4th (or 3rd) millenium BC. I suppose for all we know they were - we just don't know which types specifically. On the opposite side of Mesopotamian history, as I've already mentioned, Asshurbanipal and (especially) Nebuchadnezzar lived late enough to have plausibly heard of coins being minted in nearby places like Ionia and Lydia (perhaps they could even have seen some physically). I have no idea why they didn't make any coins themselves - they certainly flaunted their riches enough to try. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
949 Posts |
What do you make of this?
20 But every one of the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen his plowshare, his mattock, his axe, or his sickle,
21 and the charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the plowshares and for the mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening the axes and for setting the goads.
22 So on the day of the battle there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan, but Saul and Jonathan his son had them. (1Sa 13:20-22 ESV)
The time frame most often associated with the early Monarchy in ancient Israel is 1100-1000 BC.
They had no coins, but they had units of exchange valued according to various weight standards for precious metals and other commodities.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
I was going to point out that even earlier in Genesis, it was mentioned that the tomb of the patriarchs was bought with silver. This is generally believed to have happened around 1800-1500 BC, nearly a thousand years before "coins" existed.
That is why I struggle to understand how weights of silver and gold circulated as currency without a government stepping in to formalize things via stamped ingots to guarantee value.
Or maybe we could expand our view of what a "coin" is... the Japanese chogin was probably as close as we can get to these pre-currency weights, and most would consider it to be a type of coin, just like the various Chinese silver weights in tael, mace, and candareens.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
949 Posts |
Dating of events in Genesis is more problematic than it is for events in the Deuteronomistic History, which I why I gravitated to a text from 1 Samuel. That said, it is beyond question that the copper ingots known as "oxhides" were used as standardized bullion by the Ugaritic people whose civilization was destroyed by 1200 BC. They also regarded kaspu (Heb keseph; silver) as a unit of trade having value as currency either as ornament or as bullion.
The Old Babylonian Kingdom also had weight standards for transactions. Units such as the mina are mentioned in the Laws of Eshnunna and the Code of Hammurabi, (in the context of monetary penalties/fines) and these units are discussed by Barclay Head in the Historia Nummorum from the late 19th century of our time.
In Ugaritic the name of the mina is related to various words for counting and gifting, so it was a natural to be applied to units of accountancy.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Here's an interesting example of the extremely rare native Egyptian coins: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/gree...bo_II/i.html I knew that Egypt was conquered by the Achaemenids in 525 BC, and that the Persians were overthrown by Alexander in 332 BC, but I didn't know that there were three extremely short native dynasties between a successful revolution in 404 BC and re-conquest in 343 BC. During this time, gild staters were apparently struck to both Persian and Greek standards, for the sole purpose of paying foreign mercenaries. There is also a small bronze coin as well. Pretty underwhelming for such a great civilization with a rich artistic history, but as far as I am aware, the Nectanebo II stater is the sole example of Egyptian Heiroglyphs being used on a coin as a native, functional language (as opposed to modern commemoratives). Edited by Finn235
07/19/2016 09:46 am
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Moderator
United States
34428 Posts |
Sweeet coin. Too bad not from your collection, or mine!
"If you climb a good tree, you get a push."
-----Ghanaian proverb
"The danger we all now face is distinguishing between what is authentic and what is performed."
-----King Adz
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Replies: 15 / Views: 1,574 |
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Posted 07/07/2016 1:35 pm
