The Story of Money

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?