Origins: Before and After the First Coins

Long before anyone made a coin, people already had money. In Mesopotamia they paid in weighed silver and in barley. In Shang China they used cowrie shells, and later bronze tools cast in the shape of spades and knives. Across the Near East, traders carried hacksilver, chopped-up bits of silver jewellery and ingots that changed hands by weight.

All of these worked, but they were slow. Every payment needed a scale, and every lump of silver could be cut with something cheaper.

The fix came from Lydia, a kingdom in what is now western Turkey, in the late 7th century BC. Lydia's rivers carried electrum, a natural blend of gold and silver whose gold content could vary a lot. Lydian mints cut it into pieces of a fixed weight and hammered a lion's head onto each one. The stamp told you the king stood behind the value. That was the first coin.

Making one took fire, a die and a hammer. A hot blank went onto an engraved anvil die, a punch went on top, and one hard blow did the rest.

The articles below cover what came before coins, how the first ones were made, and what happened when people started shaving them.