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Message:: [QUOTE="Finn235, post: 3350566, member: 98035"]Circling back to the original question a bit, coinage appears to have been something of an "Eureka!" moment for humanity. There's plentiful evidence of the use of precious metals for barter well before 600 BC, but for whatever unknown reason everyone simply accepted the necessity of weighing it out each time a transaction was made, rather than pre-measuring it and giving it a badge of legal tender. The truly amazing part is how quickly the major powers of the world became monetized following millennia of barter economy: Asia Minor and then Greece and the Achaemenids between 650-500 BC, India between 600-500 BC, and China somewhere between 700-500 BC. If you want to make enemies in the numismatic world, claim that there was only one true invention event, and it spread via word of mouth and conquest. I haven't seen one posted yet (this forum doesn't seem to have yet seen the light that is dirt cheap ancient coins from central/southern Asia), so I'll throw in the Gandharan Shatamana, purportedly India's first coin, and maybe/maybe not an indigenous invention[ATTACH=full]887128[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]887129[/ATTACH] Curiously, these weigh almost exactly as much as two Achaemenid sigloi / one shekel, and Gandhara had been subjugated by the Achaemenids by the time of Darius. Coincidence?[/QUOTE]