Before coins, the objects were “commodity money,” Kuijpers explained in an email ... The copper currency research is part of a project to study a peculiar practice throughout ancient Europe: Valuables ...

In ancient Rome, salt was cash, and the Latin word for salt, sal, leads to the word salary. Roman workers were paid in salt…and that led to the expression, worth his salt. Pepper was also a form ...

The advent of Jiaozi demonstrated to the world that objects with little commodity value could ... of the earlier monarchs to imitate ancient Chinese paper money. In 1294, Ghazan Khan announced ...

Originating from ancient practices of promissory notes, it gained prominence in the 20th century when nations shifted from commodity-backed currencies to government-issued paper money. With the ...