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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 4587555, member: 93416&quot;]As I recall Alexander is recorded as surprised to be paid out by Taxiles in coin. If so it tell us that India was already using coin before Alexander got there.</p><p><br /></p><p>That is rather obviously true if you look at Magadha/Mauryan coins. North West India seems to have been recaptured from Alexander’s governors by the Mauryas just 8 years after Alexander left. Magadha/Mauryan in their home territories in the North East of India (Bihar) had surely been producing coins long before that.</p><p><br /></p><p>Neither (Central) Persian nor Central Asia, both on this proposed “Silk Route”, were issuing coins at a very early date. Bihar was not on this “Silk Route” and was issuing coin early. Such evidence suggests that this “Silk Route” matter was not relevant to adoption of coin use. Because coins are just not primarily to do with international trade. They are to do with domestic trade and tax collection. International trade was driven (in part) by weighed bullion already - long before coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is reasonable to call things like Athenian tetradrachms “trade coins” – but we should not imagine Athens to be somehow altruistically devoted to free trade for its own sake. Ancient Attica was a bit like modern Saudi Arabia (or Libya or Venezuela). Just as the latter skew(ed) their whole political system because they are sitting on huge oil deposits – so Attica could skew its whole political system because it was sitting on a silver mountain. Athenian tets were surely put out to cover a positive trade imbalance with the rest of the Greek world – perhaps in large part to import slave labour. So Athenian tets would indeed become “trade coins” - but that would not be the primary goal of Athens in creating them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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