Comparing the Origins of Money

Course number: B01

Supervised by: Mitsuru Hayama

Beyond the text: 12 exercises · 4 coins · 15 readings　How reading times are calculated

You will also understand

• You can handle "the birth for a land" and "the birth for humankind" without mixing them.
• Can distinguish between "origin" and "transmission," and provide concrete examples of each.
• Can explain the beginning of Japanese coinage in chronological order, from Mumon Gin-sen to Wadōkaichin.

You can start this course without reading any other course.

If you want to know more about checking sources (optional)

• Is It Really True? Checking History
  We re-examine the origins of money and famous anecdotes, comparing them with historical records and actual artifacts.

Assessment

12 exercises in this course (8 check, 1 compare, 3 written). Progress is recorded by self-assessment.

1. It is not written that money came from barterWhat survives on clay tablets are accounts of distributions and loans. The barter theory makes sense, but no record of a society living by barter has been shown.
2. What the punch guaranteed was not the metalThe king's coins were struck on an alloy with the gold thinned to 54 percent. In Kroll's reading, the royal house set them at the value of natural electrum. Whoever strikes the mark sets the value. Money is a matter not of material but of guarantee.
3. Born separately, on three continentsMoney is not one invention. It arose separately on three continents, and the forms differed.
4. Birth happens more than once"Birth" means two things: the first for humankind, and the first for a given land. Do not mix them.
5. A Coin Without a Picture, and a Coin With a LionThe earliest coins included pieces with no design and more than a dozen different marks. Kings were not the only ones striking coins.
6. Where It Is Born, Where It Is Transmitted — The Window of EmporionInvention in three places, transmission in countless. Lands where it was transmitted have a "window," and these windows have names that remain.
7. An Island That Began with Imports — From the Kaiyuan Tongbao to the Wado KaichinJapan began by modeling its coinage on that of Tang China. The weight of a single one of these model coins even became the unit known as the monme.
8. The Second Birth — Sichuan's Deposit ReceiptsBanknotes originated as an innovation by merchants and became currency through state recognition. The pattern of their birth was the same as for metal.

• Mesopotamia　Overview: the world　Before the beginning　the 31st–18th centuries BC
  §1. Check what the clay tablets actually recorded.
• Lydia · The Pactolus　Overview: the world　Before the beginning　the age of legend
  §2. The stage at which it is not yet a coin.
• Blank Electrum　Overview: the world　Before the beginning　the later 7th century BC
  §2. ⚠ Not even an image — "a punch before punches." This is the core of the course.
• Lydia　Overview: the world　600 BC　Lydia · Sardis
  §2. The moment a state guaranteed weight and fineness.
• Islam and India　Overview: the world　the 6th–4th centuries BC　India · Punch-Marked Silver
  §3. The grounds for saying it arose separately on three continents.
• The Greeks' window　Spain　about 575 BC　Emporion (today's Empúries)
  §4. The first for the peninsula. ⚠ Note how the range of dates is written.
• The silver rider　Netherlands　from 1586 to the present day　The gold workshop of the mint
  §4. A standard that has gone on being struck for over four hundred years.
• The war of the two crowns　Spain　1717　The Barcelona mint
  §4. Look at what ended behind the birth.
• The pillar dollar　Spain　1728 and 1730　Madrid
  §4. The birth of a way of making. Note the recorded fineness as well.
• Chang'an, Tang China　Japan　Before the coin　from 621
  Section 7. A model piece. Do not overlook the line stating that the weight became the "monme".
• Ōtsu Palace, Ōmi Province　Japan　Before the coin　from about 667
  Section 7. The reality of weighed money. Inconsistent weights and added silver fragments.
• The monetary civilisation of the East　Overview: the world　AD 1024　Song · Sichuan
  Section 8. The moment the world's first paper money was born from merchants' deposit receipts.
• The Silver Coin of the Sea Turtle　Greece　Circa 550 BC (disputed)　The Port of Aegina
  This is a coin from an island that adopted an invention born in the East and remade it in silver. Please read on to see what the sea turtle carrying its shell has been interpreted as a symbol of.
• Coinage ceases　Kievan Rus'　12th–14th centuries　Rus' principalities
  This is a record of a land that, having once acquired the technology of striking, abandoned it for two hundred years. Please note the description of how payments continued with silver bars and furs, and that all we know is that life went on.
• Jeonhwanguk　Korea　July 1883　The Jeonhwanguk in Hanseong
  From casting by pouring molten metal into a mould, to striking with a press. A declaration to change the manufacturing method itself is described, along with the reasons of a nation that opened its borders late.