The modern world has a constant flow of money that originates in simpler pre-currencies pioneered on ancient people at the regional level.
A few archaeologists believe that they identified a very early example of commodity money in Europe, which was used about 3,500 years ago during the Bronze Age, with denominations taking the form of bronze rings, ribs and axes. People at this stage regularly buried collections of these ubiquitous articles, leaving behind a myriad of scattered “treasures” throughout the European continent.
In a study published in PLOS ONE on Wednesday, Maikel Kuijpers, an assistant professor of European prehistory at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and Catalin N. Popa, who was a postdoctoral researcher there, weighed more than Compare Bronze Age rings, ribs and blades, from more than 100 treasures containing five or more items.
The results revealed that 70 percent of the rings were so close to mass – averaging about 7 grams – that they could not be distinguished from each other if weighed by hand. Although the ribs and knives are not quite as uniform, the study concludes that the artifacts are similar enough to demonstrate ‘the earliest development of commodity money in prehistoric Central Europe’.
“This is a very clear standardization,” said Dr. Kuijpers said.
While other researchers have questioned some of their conclusions, they agree that the study increases our knowledge of the economic activities of ancient peoples.
While bronzesmiths spread throughout Europe, these rings, ribs, and ax knives were cast for functional purposes — such as jewelry and tools — that may not be related to money. Some of the items in the data set probably maintained a strictly utilitarian or ornamental role because their weight was far beyond the calculated average.
But the comparable weights of a large portion of the artifacts leave “no doubt that at least the rings and ribs match the definition of commodity money,” the authors wrote. The bronze articles reflect forms of money based on tools known as tool money discovered elsewhere, such as knife and digging money found in China, and Aztec hoe and ax money found in Meso America.
“We do have examples in other parts of the world where you seem to have this kind of similar development” in which “a practical tool turns into this usage money, and then into this commodity money,” said dr. Kuijpers said.
A central innovation of bronze is the ability to make duplicates by casting the metal into molds. The study speculates that these almost identical specimens eventually gave rise to an abstract concept of weight, which laid the spiritual foundation for the invention of weighing tools and technologies that emerged centuries later in Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages. .
Nicola Ialongo, a prehistoric archaeologist at the Georg August University of Göttingen in Germany, said the study “makes an important contribution to understanding how early money works”, but that there was a less complicated explanation for how these standardized objects have emerged.
“As the authors acknowledge, the regularity of their samples can be explained simply by suggesting that the objects in their datasets are cast with a limited number of shapes, or that the shapes themselves have a standardized shape,” said dr. Ialongo said.
Furthermore, he added that old people might have counted this currency as we count coins today, rather than focusing on weight.
“Simply put, you do not need a weight system to be able to use metals – or any other commodity – as money,” he said, adding that many other less durable things may have been used than money before these bronze articles.
According to the authors, ‘weight’ is important because ‘there are indications that some types of objects have been deliberately attempted to reach a specific weight range.’
Barry Molloy, associate professor of archeology at University College Dublin, who was not involved in the study, noted that “there has long been a suspicion that weight and measurement systems were used in Europe during the Bronze Age.”
“The pursuit was for an exact measure, as found in Southwest Asia and the Mediterranean,” said Dr. Molloy said. “Although this article does not show that there was such a coherent system, it provides important insights into how ancient peoples in Europe themselves were able to approach these issues pragmatically before formal weight systems were developed in the Iron Age.”
While dr. Ialongo does not agree with some of the researchers’ methods, he also praised the study as’ ‘a remarkable attempt to break one of the oldest and most persistent taboos in prehistoric archeology, that’ primitive ‘societies do not have a have no proper commercial economy. ”