It's only money

Before money was invented, people carried on trade by a system of exchange called barter. Cattle, grain, salt, beads, ornaments, crude lumps of copper, iron, gold or silver were all used as mediums of exchange. It took hundreds of years for coins to replace barter.














Numismatics is the study or collection of coins, tokens, paper money and similar objects. Before money was invented, a simple form of exchange called barter was used. A fisherman might trade some of his fish for some animal skin brought back by a hunter. However there were problems with barter. A farmer might not want to trade his wheat for hunter's deerskins. And a cloth maker might refuse the farmer's wheat because he had already traded cloth for wheat with other farmers. Another way of making exchanges had to be found and so money was invented. One of the earliest forms of money was cattle. In ancient times, a man who owned a large number of cattle was considered rich. Ancient peoples also used salt and grain as money. Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, which was a scarce item. The word "salary" comes from the Roman salarium, meaning salt money.
People next began using crude pieces of metal as money, since they were easy to carry. The first real coins probably date back to about 700 B.C. and were made by the Lydians of Asia Minor. The Greek began using coins - the drachma- in the 6 th century B. C. In the 4 th century B.C., the Roman Empire issued its first silver coins.
Paper money come much later. Marco Polo, the Italian adventurer, claimed to have seen paper money in China in the 13th century A. D. But it was only about 300 years ago that paper money began to replace coins as a more convenient means of exchange. At first, many people distrusted paper money, which had no real value. They preferred coins made of gold, silver or other valuable metals. Today we mainly use paper money and cards  to pay for goods and services.