The invention of currency may be one of the oldest questions of mankind: when was it invented and who was the creator? Archaeologists who are curious about this ancient query have struggled to determine the exact moment of the origin of money. Until now.
A research team in the Netherlands has discovered a point in the history of the early Bronze Age that may have start of currency as we know it. They used a new method to find evidence of standardized weights and measures – the signs of emerging currencies. Civilizations about 5,000-4,000 years ago (3,000-2,100 BC) used the weight of these objects to measure it and use it as money.
The researchers found that up to 70 percent of certain bronze objects it was indistinguishable same weight, which implies that they were created to be interchangeable. There were objects like rings, objects like ax blades and objects like ribs. In photos, it almost looks more like green beans, as oxidation gives them a beautiful emerald shade:
The discovery helps scientists better understand the society and emerging market systems of these ancient people, and how simple axes or bronze rings represent the first step in the billion-dollar system of currency.
Their findings were published in the journal on Wednesday PLOS ONE.
The big idea – While money plays a major role in shaping our social structures historically and today, it can be difficult to track the movement and creation of these essential signs before inventing ledgers or even uniform weight measurements.
As a result, the authors behind this new study argue that any attempt to reconcile historical items and monetary tones should take into account the limitations of these periods. For example, estimating the similar weights of metals or other precious materials would probably not be done with any exact scale, but by holding two items in hand and measuring their difference in weight instinctively.
This kind of measurement may sound objective (and it is, at least compared to modern scales), but the authors write it using an approach called psychophysics (which they describe as a ‘subfield of cognitive psychology … dealing with the relationships between physical properties of stimuli and perceptual responses to these stimuli’), they can better understand this mindset and how it affects the creation of some of the original currency of ancient Europe.
“An important challenge at this point is to use the statistical tools used to express and adjust accuracy in accordance with the findings of psychophysics,” the authors write. “In short, prehistoric units of weight must literally make sense.”
What they did – In essence, the team’s measurement technique was to compare the weights of bronze objects and to see how close their weights are to each other. If the weight of two items is within ten percent of each other, the researchers classify the weight of the pair as indistinguishable by human sense.
This criterion becomes the “Weber faction. “(Read more about Weber’s Law if you’re curious.)
If enough of these rings, ribs and axes have weights within these ranges, the researchers assume they should have been deliberate rather than by accident. This is supported by the idea that metal rings and ribs had little other purpose and that axes were already a valued item.
What they discovered – To see how well this relationship lasts in the real world, the researchers tested their theory on more than 5,000 bronze pieces, including ax blades, rings and ribs, from more than 100 different treasures in Bronze Age Europe – ranging from Germany to Czech Republic and Scandinavia.
The most striking discovery the team made while comparing the weights of these different items was that 70.3 percent of the bronze rings – which were more than 2,600 items in total – were all within a weight base of 176 to 217 grams. Using the Webster fraction, the team writes that these items are then of 195.5 grams.
This clear connection was not the case for all articles, but they also discovered that 71.6 percent of the 1106 heavy ribs (which they grouped separately from light ribs) came from 13 different treasures. was noticeably identical to a rib weighing 185.5 grams. Although the ax leaves could not comply with this type of agreement, the authors write that their weight equality was still slightly higher than the odds.
Why it matters – This weight-based similarity between articles, as well as the aggregation and replication of these items into treasures, has led the authors to speculate that such articles are intended to be used as a currency.
“Although archaeologists have no insight into the transactions that took place, there can be no doubt that the rings and ribs at least correspond to the definition of commodity money, ‘the authors write.
If you ever judged the value of something according to its weight, you would not be the first humanity of mankind to be different.
Summary: The origin of money and the formulation of coherent weight and measurement systems is one of the most important prehistoric developments of the human intellect. We offer a method of detecting observable weight standard and apply it to 5028 rings, ribs and ax blocks from Central Europe in the early bronze. We calculate the degree of uniformity on the basis of psychophysics and quantify it using similarity indices. The analysis shows that 70.3% of all rings could not be noticeably distinguished from a ring weighing 195.5 grams, indicating their suitability as commodity money. Observation weight equivalence is shown between rings and a selection of ribs and axes. Collected of these objects proves their interchangeability. We suggest that the production of copies of rings led to the recognition of weight agreements and the independent emergence of a weighing system in Central Europe at the end of the early Bronze Age.