All money is a matter of belief.
Money is defined by economists as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. Simply put, money is something that can be used to make a payment.2 Any object can serve this purpose as long as it has an agreed-upon value and is trusted for use in transactions. Many different objects have functioned as money throughout history, reflecting the various ways that communities have designated value as well as illustrating how ideas about worth have changed over time.
Seashells, bricks of tea, bars of salt, stones, and plastic cards are just some of the many nonmetallic objects that have been used to make payments. Small objects, such as cowrie shells, once circulated across significant trade networks in Africa and Asia, whereas large, heavy objects, such as doughnut-shaped stones from the island of Yap, were exchanged only among the local community. Precious metals and base metals have also been used to make money. Although coins are the most common today, metallic money has taken many forms, such as copper crosses from southern Africa and silver bars from Laos. Monetary objects in forms other than coins and notes are often referred to as “primitive” or “traditional” money, yet they are essentially the same as coins and notes in their function and utility to the societies that have relied on them. They have also circulated alongside coins and notes for millennia.
The use of metal coins can be traced back more than 2,600 years to tiny stamped pieces of electrum—a naturally occurring mixture of gold and silver—in ancient Lydia (modern Turkey) and small bronze tools in China. Until the mid-twentieth century, many governments around the world issued coins made from gold and silver. The scarcity and desirability of precious metals made gold and silver coins intrinsically valuable but also constrained monetary supplies, forcing governments and their citizens to rely on alternative forms of money.3
Paper money was first used in China more than 1,000 years ago. Beginning in the seventeenth century, governments and banks in Europe and America increasingly printed and issued paper money. Some governments cultivated trust in paper by making it redeemable for precious metal coins and bullion. For example, the United States issued gold certificates from 1865 to 1934 and silver certificates from 1878 to 1964. Over the last century, governments around the world abandoned the practice of connecting gold and silver to the value of their currencies in favor of fiat currencies. Fiat currencies do not derive value from the materials used, but rather from their legal status as currency and public trust in the issuing government.
Whether a carefully engraved note or string of colorful beads made from shells, in order for objects to work as money, people have to believe in them. When a society collectively agrees on the value of money, trade can take place and wealth can accumulate. The great diversity in size, form, material, and design of money used around the world demonstrates that its origins do not lie in a particular object or place but in shared understandings between individuals and communities.
Feathers, bones, seashells, cloth, and important commodities, such as bricks of tea (Figure 13), are just some of the various objects that have been used to represent value and to make general or ceremonial payments. Some objects, such as seashells (Figure 14), have been used as money both in their original form and as raw material to make monetary objects, such as Native American wampum (Figure 15).
Figure 13.
Brick of tea, Siberia, eighteenth to nineteenth century. Donated by the Stack family.
Figure 14.
Cowrie shells. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
Figure 15.
Clam shell wampum, United States. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
Small seashells have many characteristics that make them ideal monetary objects. They are durable, portable, and difficult to imitate. One species of cowrie shell is named Cypraea moneta, or the money cowrie, because it was used so widely for this purpose (Figure 16). Shells circulated as a medium of exchange in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and North America. Seashells are no longer an official form of money, but they remain an alternative to notes and coins during periods of scarcity. During the Great Depression, decorated clam shells briefly functioned as money in Pismo Beach, California (Figure 17).
Figure 16.
Twenty-nine strung cowrie shells. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
Figure 17.
One dollar clam shell, United States, 1933. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
Stone rings, called rai, have been used as money on the Pacific island of Yap. The rai shown in Figure 18 weighs 168.5 pounds and measures about 28 inches across. It is not intended to circulate like a coin. Instead, its use has been reserved for significant or ceremonial payments, such as dowries and funerary payments (Figure 19). Rai have also represented accumulated wealth and conveyed social status. Some stone rings are so large and heavy that they cannot be moved, but changes in ownership of the rings are acknowledged by the community on Yap.4
Figure 18.
Stone ring, island of Yap (Micronesia), twentieth century. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
Figure 19.
Stone money with strings of pearl shell “presented to a corpse at a burial.” Photo reproduced from W. H. Furness, “The Stone Money of Uap, West Caroline Islands,” Transactions of the Department of Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania Museum 1 (1904): 57.
Many different metals have been used as money, including copper, iron, tin, gold, and silver. Metal money is durable and can be melted down and used for other purposes, which makes it an appealing form of payment. Metallic money ranges from simple shapes to highly refined designs (Figures 20–22).
Figure 20.
Silver “Tiger’s Tongue” bar ingot, Laos, nineteenth century. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
Figure 21.
Manilla, West Africa, nineteenth century. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
Figure 22.
“Tin Hat” coin, Malay Peninsula, nineteenth century. Donated by Mrs. F. C .C. Boyd.
Kissi pennies are made from iron and take their name from the Kissi people of modern-day Liberia and Sierra Leone (Figure 23). It is believed that the shape was intended to display the quality of the iron. The shape shows that the iron can be twisted, hammered, sharpened into a blade, and fashioned into points.5 Kissi pennies were used for transactions in West Africa from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and could be exchanged for coins and notes circulating in the region.
Figure 23.
Kissi pennies, Liberia, nineteenth to twentieth century. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
The earliest coins originated independently in three different parts of the world. Around the same time in the seventh century BCE, coins were first made in Lydia (modern Turkey) and in China. The first Indian coins were made in the fifth century BCE. The earliest coins from Lydia (Figure 24) and India (Figure 25) were made from small, round pieces of metal, whereas the first Chinese coins were in the shape of farming tools, such as the bronze spade in Figure 26.
Figure 24.
One-third stater coin, Lydia, seventh to sixth century BCE. Donated by Estate of Josiah K. Lilly Jr.
Figure 25.
Punch-marked coin, Son River region (India), fourth century BCE. Donated by Raymond and Meryem Hebert.
Figure 26.
Hollow-handle spade, China, fifth to fourth century BCE. Donated by George B. Glover.
Paper money as it is known today was first developed in China in the eleventh century. The note in Figure 27 was issued by the Ming dynasty in the fourteenth century. Its value corresponded to 1,000 bronze coins, which are depicted strung together in the center of the note.6
Figure 27.
Great Ming Circulating Treasure Note, China, fourteenth century. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
The weight and purity of precious metal, such as gold and silver, determines its value as money. Determining weight requires a scale (Figure 28) and a trustworthy set of weights of known measurements. Some cultures have made weights into art forms, such as sculptural weights that were used in West Africa for weighing gold dust from the fifteenth century to the late nineteenth century (Figures 29 and 30).7
Figure 28.
Scale, United States, nineteenth century.
Figure 29.
Crocodile gold weight, Gold Coast (Ghana), nineteenth century. Donated by Benjamin and Harvey G. Stack.
Figure 30.
Shield gold weight, Gold Coast (Ghana), nineteenth century. Donated by National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The use of gold and silver in transactions can be traced back more than 4,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. These precious metals are valued for their scarcity, making them desirable materials for saving and trading. Gold and silver became the most widely used precious metals for coins in the ancient world and were regularly used to make coins until the mid-twentieth century (Figures 31–35).
Figure 31.
Gold ingot, Mexico, seventeenth century. Donated by Franklin P. Perdue.
Figure 32.
Eight escudo coin, Mexico, 1744. Donated by Estate of Josiah K. Lilly Jr.
Figure 33.
Silver ingot, China, late nineteenth century. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
Figure 34.
Tetradrachm coin, Athens, 454–404 BCE.
Figure 35.
Stater coin, Corinth, fourth century BCE. Transfer from U.S. Mint.
The scarcity of gold and silver, precious metals used in the production of coins, constrained monetary supplies. From the seventeenth century, governments increasingly began to issue paper money, which could be redeemed for gold or silver coins or bullion. The notes in Figures 36 and 37 are gold and silver certificates issued in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Figure 36.
Twenty dollar gold certificate, United States, 1905. Donated by The Chase Manhattan Bank.
Figure 37.
Five dollar silver certificate, United States, 1886. Donated by U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Precious metals are no longer used to make national currencies or to back them. Today, money derives its value from national laws defining what can be used as legal tender and the user’s faith in the authority that issues that money. This type of money is referred to as fiat, which means “it shall be” in Latin (Figure 38).
Figure 38.
One dollar note, United States, 1963. Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Charles O’Donnell.
Coins can be made by casting metal in a mold or striking metal between two dies. Coin dies are made from hard metals, including bronze, iron, and steel, and are engraved with negative impressions (Figure 39).8 Each pair of dies has different designs for the obverse, or front, and reverse of a coin. Coins were struck by hand with a hammer until the sixteenth century, when the process became increasingly mechanized.
Figure 39.
One cent coin dies, Confederate States of America, 1861. Donated by Robert Bashlow.
Notes are made using printing plates, which are coated with ink and pressed into special paper, leaving behind a design that is intended to be easy to recognize but difficult to forge.9 Early printing plates were made from copper, such as the twenty dollar Confederate printing plate from 1861 shown in Figure 40. It was used to print Confederate currency during the American Civil War.
Figure 40.
Twenty dollar note printing plate, Confederate States of America, 1861.
