As we all know, money has no intrinsic value. It has value only through the faith that people have in it.
Money does not have to be in metal coins or paper notes, but rather anything that people are ready to believe can be exchanged for another commodity. In the 21st century it became just electronic numbers on a bank’s computer. Initially, when one wanted a commodity that someone else had, it was most likely that one tried to trade for it. Such a barter system was used in 6,000 B.C. for example, when Mesopotamians wanted items from the Phoenicians. Similar trading systems were probably used for thousands of years, before someone came with the idea of recording the receiving or giving of an item without a reciprocal transaction. Such notations could be used to compensate for a later transaction. The first economic system, similar to our money system that we know, of was in 3000 BC, when the Sumerians used “barley money.” This meant that a transaction (someone gave someone else some object) would be equated with a certain amount of barley. The barley would often be in a silas bowl (could contain about a liter.) This could later be exchanged for something else worth a sila (liter) of barley. Of course, carrying around a lot of sila bowls of barley was rather cumbersome, and around the middle of the century, the first silver shekel appeared. Initially the shekel was not a silver coin but 8.33 grams of silver, although later coins began to appear. Around the same time there appeared in Mesopotamia agricultural symbols on clay tablets to represent debts. Eventually such clay tablets or notations |