75 COIN HISTORY WORLDWIDE CATTLE, SALT, AND SHELLS Every word we use is like time traveling. And few things make us go as far as think about our origins. As we reflect on them, we are also thinking about trade, which emerged with the human being. For example, today, when we use the term pecuniary to refer to money, we are going back to eighth-century Greece. If at that time someone wanted to purchase a man, he would have to pay 100 heads of cattle. If it were a woman, they would spend from 20 to 40. Cattle is translated into the Latin word pecus, and that is the origin of the term. But let’s face it: oxen are not the most practical way to make a payment. That’s why the idea of recording their image on a small piece of commercial value came up later. But cattle are far from being the strangest item to be used as bargaining chip: pork jaws, furs, and salt – where the term salary comes from, by the way - are just a few examples: some indigenous tribes in North America made payments with the scalp of enemies. Among the most used types of primitive coins, however, were much more harmless items: shells, more commonly the cowrie , a white or yellowish shell, and the zimbo, a grayish shell. With 50 zimbos, one could buy a chicken and, with 300, a goat. A slave was worth about 70 kilos of cowries. COWRY By invading Uganda, between the 17th and 18th centuries, the British tried to replace the cowries with their coins. Without success, they had to establish an equivalence of exchange: 200 cowries = 1 shilling and 4 pence 3 thousand cowries = 1 pound When metal was discovered it naturally started being used as currency, first in its natural state, as it was found, and later in the form of bars or in the shape of objects. Coin making began in the first millennium BC. They were forged inspired in day-to-day items: there were coins in the form of a knife, key, spears, rings, axes and even bread. But who, after all, was the actual creator of coins? The dispute is fierce. The feat is claimed by the kings of Lydia , in Anatolia, now part of Turkey. Around the seventh century BC, there were small irregular coins of rounded shape and made of electro, a natural alloy of gold and silver. On the obverse was a lion’s head; On the reverse, a warranty mark. LYDIA According to researchers ian Carradice and Martin jessop Price, in lydia, one coin was equivalent to one month of subsistence. Archaeologist Robert Manuel Cook believed the value was greater: a coin could buy 11 sheep, which contrasts with the view of another scholar Michael Mitchiner, who points out that it would be possible to buy only one sheep or three bottles of wine.Lydia also has the merit of creating the first gold and silver coins in 550 BC. two centuries later, in 330 BC, conqueror Darius was the first personality to have his portrait engraved on a coin. the golden ones were named darics, and the silver ones, shekels. Both had the figure of the king on the obverse. But the answer is not so easy. Some say that the invention of coins can be credited to the kings of Macedonia, to king Fidone of Argo, to the administrators of Egina or even to the Chinese people - who already take credit for the creation of paper money. The Sumerians also played a significant role in this story. Although they are not the inventors of coins, they are credited with having created the concept of money as we know today. In the fifth century BC, these people, settled in Babylon and Assyria, developed a calculation based on constant reference values, and this is how silver and gold became units of measure and price. However, at that time metals did not circulate, they stayed within the temples. That’s why the Sumerians do not earn the title of inventors of money - which, by definition, must have a liberating value and can be used to pay something, so to speak. THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF GREECE AND ROME Because they created and developed the best-known examples of the monetary system of antiquity, Greece and Rome strongly influenced the development of currencies worldwide. And it is thanks to numismatics that we can write about those two civilizations in so much detail today: coins tell history. The earliest Greek coins were minted in the seventh century BC and contained representations of animals, plants, and objects especially useful to mankind, such as cows, goats, grape bunches, and ears of wheat. The silver units - the monetary metal most used by that civilization - were called drachmas . Some of the best known depicted owls, turtles, and Pegasus. The gold units of the Greek coins were called staters. WHAT COULD BE DONE WITH DRACHMAS IN ANCIENT GREECE? If you won the Olympics, you would earn 500 drachmas. Now, if you made a living as a teacher, your salary would be about 40 drachmas. in case you worked as a construction worker, you would get a drachma per day. At that time, someone who owned 84,000 drachmas could be considered a millionaire. In 525 BC, one of the most famous coins of Greece, the tetradrachma, was minted. On the reverse, an owl; On the obverse, the profile of Palas Athena. It remained unchanged for two centuries