HISTORY OF MONEY

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 289, 5 December 1936, Page 11

HISTORY OF MONEY

ESSENTIAL OF TRADE. MANY INTERESTING FORMS. FBOAE CATTI4E TO CHEQUES. "A Short History of Money" was the subject of a paper read by Mr. J. Berry to members of the New Zealand Numismatic Society in Wellington. Mr. Berry discussed the evolution of money fiom the days of barter until modern times. As an instrument of trade, he said, money had assumed a variety of interesting forms before arriving at the stage of circular metal coins now used in most civilised countries. Oxen, slaves, sheep, fish hooks, nails, beads and shells all served as a medium of exchange .during the march of civilisation. In the period 1000 B.C. in the area comprising Egypt, Greece and Palestine—the cradle ot civilisation —the people were y engaged in pastoral pursuits, and then wealth was for the most part represented by sheep and cattle, which forme the basis of barter in trading. 7 al " es were measured by the unit of the herd. the ox. The modern word was derived from the Latin pecus, meaning cattle —the money of the early days. Cowrie, or shell money, _ the most widely-circulated one-time rival of the metal disc, was now used in isolated communities. Metal disc money was first used in Lvdia (Asia Minor) about 2600 years •ago, although China was stated to have used inscribed metal coins in the pel 10 1115-1079 B.C. The Chinese "tao was one of the first metal coins used. Bars of crystal salt were used as money m parts" of Ethiopia, and when meeting a friend it was the custom there to offer a "coin" to be licked. Money naturally lost weight by such friendly hospitality. Coins 12ft Across. On the island of Yap, in the Caroline Group, coins of stone were sometimes twelve feet across and weighed hundreds

of pounds. Wealthy Polynesians often deposited large coin stones in front of their homes as a permanent indication of their financial standing. The outsize Yap money presented, a problem to the ardent coin collector. Cyprus first discarded oxen and sheep as money in favour of copper pots, which evolved into copper strips called "obolus." Italy first adopted a unit of copper as a measure of value, an "aes"—a Roman pound of twelve ounces —had the value of a pound of copper. Precious metal money first came trom Lvdia, the home of Croesus, in the Near 'East, about 700 8.C., where the halfOriental, half-Greek inhabitants obtained from the gold-bearing sands a metal called electrum, which was a gold having an alloy of about 30 per cent silver, and from this metal coins were made. The metal seeins to have been poured out into puddles, which naturally took a circular shape, and in that way the disc or circular coin seems to have developed. , As copper became plentiful, and too bulky in proportion to value, silver was used'for money, and for 2000 years the silver standard was supreme; maps were made and remade in a desire to obtain silver. The old.Spanish Empire was built indirectly on gold and silver found in abundance in Mexico and Peru. In her quest for precious metals, Spain extended her sway over two-thirds of the western hemisphere, and it was the continued search for money metals that unrolled the larger part of the map of North and South America. From 200 years before the time of Julius Caesar until the end of the 19th century, silver reigned supreme until displaced by gold as the international standard of value. Gold always had existed in the background as a universal symbol of the highest value, but the use of gold in trade had been rare. ' A plentiful supply of silver reduced silver values, and with a large increase in business silver coins became unsuitable for larger transactions, with the result that gold came into favour as a medium of exchange, particularly ' following t'. • discovery of gold in California in 1848, and, later, in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The bank-note and cheque system was a natural corollary. The early and rapid colonisation of the overseas'sections of the British Commonwealth of Nations was closely linked with the quest for the most valuable of all money-metals—gold.