History of Money

Good morning and Namaskaram. I, Aman Jaiswal of XIth std am going to talk about the History of Money or basically how money evolved. I know none of you like history, but I will make an attempt at making it as interesting for you as I can. The evolution of money commenced years and years and years…. And years ago! So here comes the definition.
Intro: Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given socio-economic context or country. But, how did money come about? The history of money begins around 2500 years ago …….. DAMN
Barter: The first people didn't buy goods from other people with money. They used barter. Barter is the exchange of personal possessions of value for other goods that you want. From 9,000-6,000 B.C., livestock was often used as a unit of exchange. Later, as agriculture developed, people used crops for barter.
Shells: At about 1200 B.C. in China, cowry shells became the first medium of exchange, or money. The cowry has served as money throughout history even to the middle of this century.
First Metal Money: China, in 1,000 B.C., produced mock cowry shells at the end of the Stone Age. They can be thought of as the original development of metal currency. In addition, tools made of metal, like knives and spades, were also used in China as money. From these models, we developed today's round coins that we use daily. The Chinese coins were usually made out of base metals which had holes in them so that you could put the coins together to make a chain.
Silver Coins: At about 500 B.C., pieces of silver were the earliest coins. Eventually in time they took the appearance of today and were imprinted with numerous gods and emperors to mark their value. These coins were first shown in Lydia, or Turkey, during this time, but the methods were used over and over again, and further improved upon by the Greek, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman empires. Not like Chinese coins, which relied on base metals, these new coins were composed from scarce metals such as bronze, gold, and silver, which had a lot of intrinsic value.
Did you know……A stack of notes destroyed in a single year would measure 200 miles high. Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth, is a mere 19,035 feet, or slightly more than 3 miles high, NOT BAD
Leather Currency: In 118 B.C., banknotes in the form of leather money were used in China. One-foot square pieces of white deerskin edged in vivid colours were exchanged for goods. This is believed to be the beginning of a kind of paper money.
Noses: During the ninth century A.D., the Danes in Ireland had an expression "To pay through the nose." It comes from the practice of cutting the noses of those who were careless in paying the Danish poll tax.
Paper Currency: From the ninth century to the fifteenth century A.D., in China, the first actual paper currency was used as money. Through this period the amount of currency skyrocketed causing severe inflation. Unfortunately, in 1455 the use of the currency vanished from China. European civilization still would not have paper currency for many years.
Wampum: In 1535, though likely well before this earliest recorded date, strings of beads made from clam shells, called wampum, are used by North American Indians as money. Wampum means white, the color of the clam shells and the beads.
Wait wait…… b4 I continue, I was
I was wondering, where do they heck do they get these dates from? Does anyone even check them?
Gold Standard: In 1816, England made gold a benchmark of value. This meant that the value of currency was pegged to a certain number of ounces of gold. This would help to prevent inflation of currency. The U.S. went on the gold standard in 1900.\
Today …. At present, nations continue to change their currencies AND, Tomorrow is already here. Credit Cards and Electronic money (or digital cash) is already being exchanged over the Internet.
Did you also know, If you had 10 billion $1 notes and spent one $ or Rs. 54.5 every second of every day, it would require 317 years for you to go broke. BTW 10 billion $ equals Rs.54500,00,00,000 or Fifty four thousand five hundred crores.

Money is not the biggest thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.