.: Money
Money
By
Kenneth J. McCormick
webmaster
Http://aboutfacts.net
Money is a strange thing when you really think about it. Today most money is paper and has no value of its own. The value that is given to money is by agreement. In other words, a country prints a bill and everyone agrees the value is that which is stated on its face. I am not talking about the value of money in relation to other money in the world because we all know that changes constantly. As a matter of fact some people have profited greatly from exchanging currency at the right time and taking advantage of shifts in its value with other currencies.
In this country one of the colonies' most famous figures made the plates for the first Continental Currency in 1775, he was Paul Revere. You could redeem these bills for Spanish-milled dollars. That guy Paul Revere seemed to get involved with everything, didn't he? But the funny thing was that after this, when we became a country we didn't print paper money for a long time, preferring to use coinage instead. The first official paper money wasn't printed until 1861. The US government had charted hundreds of banks to print their own money causing confusion and easy counterfeiting. Can you imagine that over 7000 different bills were circulating? I am sure that many places might not even know if a bill was legal tender or not when they saw it. But when the government did print paper money they may have went too far. They even printed three cent notes, 5 cent notes, 10 cent notes, 25 cent notes and 50 cent notes. Today the US bill is a mixture of micro text, hidden threads, secret inks and hard to get paper. This hopefully, is meant to cut down on counterfeiting.
India is a country when strange money has been used including stones, paper, shells and pearls. In the fifth century it was noted that Cowrie shells were being used as currency in some areas. What is even more strange, is the fact that this custom continued for so long. It lasted into the 18 century. A Cowrie shell was worth almost 4,100 rupees at the time. This was not the only strange money used. Bitter Almond was also used as currency along with cattle. The tail of a cow was used in place of a coin. I wonder if anyone ever asked "can I borrow a few Cowries till payday?". Leather had also been used as currency but didn't last long. Even sheet metal was made into coins.
In early Quebec, the French Colony had to wait for shipments of coins from France. This was a problem because the trip was a long and dangerous one and these coins may not arrive at all. This came to a head in 1685 when the French Colonies ran out of currency. The head of government in the French Colonies was the Intendant. He issued promissory notes and used his personal credit to back them. The notes were written on playing cards that had been cut into quarters. Each quarter contained the seal of the Treasurer and the signature of the Governor and the Intendant. It was thought that this would be a stop gap measure until more currency arrived from France. If a merchant refused to accept this money he would be fined. When coinage ran out a year later the playing card money was circulated again. This angered the French King who ordered it all withdrawn. When final redemption took place way more playing card money was presented for redemption than was officially created. There was not enough cash to redeem it all and it lost credibility. Even with all this, the playing card money was issued again right up to 1706 when a promise was made not to issue more but it remained in circulation right up to 1728.
In pre Christian Ireland Slaves and Cattle served as currency along with Celtic Ring money. The money was in the shape of a ring and could be either twisted or flat. It could be made from either solid gold or be gold plated. Ring money dates back to about 200 B.C. The gold plating was set over copper. One of he interesting points here is no one seems to know how value was set for the gold plated rings, but it seems that it was not created to fool people.
A system of tokens was discovered which were made from clay and dated back to about 7,000 B.C. It is theory right now, but it seems that these clay tokens may have been used as currency. It could even be that the shape and size of the token represented what you could buy with it. For Example the symbol for bread was a small right facing triangle in Sumerian and a token like that has been found. Some tokens seem to have stood for numbers and went as high as 36,000.
Did ancient man have a system with currency? It could be. Ancient man may have been more advanced than we suspect right now. We have only highlighted a few different types of strange money but you can see that strange things have been used as currency over the years. The next thing might be SMART CURRENCY. Can you imagine talking currency or currency that can change its value? Well I guess we will just have to wait and see what the future holds.
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This article may be republished if left unchanged and all links are intact.
About the author:
Ken is the webmaster of About Facts Net, a free, interesting Internet magazine that is suitable for the entire family. Many of the articles are accompanied by photos, video and/or audio. Http://aboutfacts.net
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