History of money

The use of barter like methods may date back to at least 100,000 years ago. Trading in red ochre is attested in Swaziland, shell jewellery in the form of strung beads also dates back to this period, and had the basic attributes needed of commodity money. To organize production and to distribute goods and services among their populations, before market economies existed, people relied on tradition, top-down command, or community cooperation.
The Shekel referred to an ancient unit of weight and currency. The first usage of the term came from Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC. and referred to a specific mass of barley which related other values in a metric such as silver, bronze, copper etc. A barley/shekel was originally both a unit of currency and a unit of weight.
A 640 BCE one-third stater electrum coin from Lydia, shown larger.
According to Herodotus, and most modern scholars, the Lydians were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coin. It is thought that these first stamped coins were minted around 650-600 BC. A stater coin was made in the stater (trite) denomination. To complement the stater, fractions were made: the trite (third), the hekte (sixth), and so forth in lower denominations.
The name of Croesus of Lydia became synonymous with wealth in antiquity. Sardis was renowned as a beautiful city. Around 550 BC, Croesus contributed money for the construction of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
The first banknotes were used in China in the 7th century, and the first in Europe issued by Stockholms Banco in 1661.
In the Western world, a prevalent term for coin-money has been specie, stemming from Latin in specie "in kind".
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