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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 22556, member: 57463&quot;]Ancient Chinese history is an enigma, at least to me.&nbsp; So many records were purposely destroyed, both in imperial times, and of course under the communists.&nbsp; Records that were not destroyed remain inaccessible.&nbsp; You would have to read Chinese excellently and do it for many styles and dialects to unravel the mystery.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ancient China may have had sophisticated forms of money long before the Greeks.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>As for whether or not these squares of gold are &quot;coins&quot; that depends on the definition of &quot;coin&quot; and I do not know one that is watertight.&nbsp; It may be that we need to totally redefine all of our terms.&nbsp; The idea that coins (by definition) are stamped with a mark to signify their weight or purity or value or whatever is malarky.&nbsp; There are so many counter-examples that you cannot call them exceptions.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Coin, banknote, chit, scrip, token, promissory note, bond, receipt, ...&nbsp; we all sort of accept a broadly undefined range of specifics that we loosely integrate into concepts.&nbsp; The concepts, however, are not rigorous.&nbsp; I am not sure that they ever can be.&nbsp; It might be interesting to try.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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