The Story of Money
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The story of money.
Imagine living a long time ago, in a time without money.
How about 9000 B.C.?
Instead of money
there was swapping also known as bartering.
It worked like this.
Want to sell this apple for an orange?
Yes.
I want a cow, you want some wheat?
But there were problems with this
the items needed to be of a similar value.
How about swapping this apple for that DVD?
No way. That's not fair.
The other problems was the many items go rotten
and so didn't keep their value.
And some were too heavy to even carry
it started to get even more complicated
when people began using gifts
like perfume, jewellery and other valuable goods.
You want this perfume for that necklace?
I don't like smell of it. No.
However,
in China,
they had started using cowrie shells as money
so instead of swapping things for other things
you could buy the things you wanted with shells.
But no one in the west knew about this
because by then there was no social media,
internet, T.V or telephone to communicate.
So what did they try in the west?
They started to use items that were not perishable.
Items that wouldn't break or get easily damaged.
Gold
but gold is too heavy to keep on you and carry around
but what if it was a little smaller?
In 200 A.D. coins of precious metals were made.
They were small which made them easier to carry around
to make things even easier the coins were weighed
and stamped, so everyone knew how much they were worth.
People started to give their gold coins to the goldsmith
to look after and keep them safe.
Can you look after my gold coins please?
Yes. Here's your 10 coins receipt.
These receipts were the earliest types of bank notes.
They have developed and now
they are no longer linked to gold.
Over time more and more security features
have been added to notes
to stop them being copied.
As well as getting smaller, so they now fit into our pockets.
Money has continued to change
and in 1950's credit cards were invented.
Cards mean that now we don't need to carry
notes and coins around. Paper stuff.
In recent years, with better computers and internet technology
you don't even need to be there to pay for products.
Most of the money in the world
is now in fact invisible.
Money has come a long way over the years
and it continues to change.
Who knows what the future would hold?