If the love of money really is the root of all evil, as that famous Biblical proverb would have us believe, then the world has been a particularly malicious place for a very long time. As long as humans possessed something that other humans wanted, we've had to find ways to get something that other humans wanted, we've had to find ways to get something out of the deal before handling said possession over. The end result of all this is the estimated $5 trillion in circulating cash, according to the Bank for international Settlements, that's doing its dirty work around the world. But how did all this currency get out and about in the first place to become the love of our lives? Here's a brief history of how money came to be, well, money.
Have A Cowrie, Man!
In the beginning, there was barter. And it was good. There's no exact determination of when people developed early systems for trading goods for services and/or other products, but the process seems to go back to the ancient Egyptians. Since there was no such thing as cash or coins, cattle and other livestock reportedly became some of the first things humans considered to be currency. (It wasn't just the cows that were exchanged. Their dung was also considered a hot property, used as everything from glue to build homes to poultices for infections.)
Other commodities, including salt, grains and tea, also made their way into this ever-expanding exchange system.
There was just one problem. These goods might be either too large (the cattle) or too perishable (the produce) to transport. That fact probably explains why by 1200 B.C., regions like China and Africa were gradually moving from cows to cowries. The latter, the shell of a mollusk found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, was reportedly the earliest predecessor of what we now consider cash.
