SPECULATION ON THE ORIGIN OF COINAGE (c) Copyright 1993- 1997 by Michael E. Marotta [earlier versions of this work have appeared in The Classical Numismatic Review, The Numismatist, The Shinplaster, and the Mich-Matist.] The theory that merchants invented coinage is widely found in authoritative works on money, banking, economics, and numismatics, as well as the history of technology. The Encyclopedia Britannica claims that the first coins bore a primitive punchmark, "certifying to either weight or fineness, or both." The ANA "Money Talks" radio series also broadcast this idea, complete with a visual sketch of Asian merchants exchanging fine wares for coins. This theory is full of holes. (1) If a merchant ever marked a lump of metal to know it again, it was to avoid taking back "the bad penny." The purpose of trade is exchange. Once you spend your coins, you never expect to see the metal again. (2) If coins were invented for trade, there would be hoards of the oldest coins all over the ancient world, clustered at trade centers. In fact, such hoards are conspicuous in their absence. The earliest known coins did not travel far from home. (3) The fact that the first coins were made of electrum leads to another problem with the commercial theory. Electrum is a naturally-occurring alloy. Electrum ranges in color and color alone is not a good indicator of alloy. So, no one could have guaranteed its fineness or "purity." It wasn't until 250 BC (400 years after coins were invented) that Archimedes discovered how to assay an alloy by measuring its specific gravity. (4) Furthermore, no one has ever suggested a meaning to the punch marks which appear on the earliest coins. There is no known way to see in the impressions the name of a merchant or the weight of the ingot or its fineness. (5) The Phoenicians, were among the very last, not first, ancient people to mint coins. If coinage were invented to facilitate trade, it didn't impress the greatest traders of the day. (Interesting also is that common Phoenician coins don't carry Tyrian or Sidonian art, but the symbols of the Greeks and Egyptians: An Owl with Crook and Flail.) (6) Spending the earliest known coins would have been difficult because the first known coins were worth more than anything you could buy with them. Colin Kraay, in his book, _Archaic and Classical Greek Coins_, says "the natural assumption that coins were used in remote antiquity much as they are used today is frequently falsified by the absence of those small denominations which alone make such a use possible." These and still other reasons falsify the commercial theory for the origins of coinage. (A) In 1920, P. N. Ure suggested that the 7th century BC saw the birth of both a "new form of government and a new form of wealth." According to Ure, the emergence of a mercantile class along the Ionian coast led to conflicts with the agrarian class which ruled from Lydia. Tyrants as self-made men replaced kings who were hereditary rulers. They did so, in part, by paying mercenaries. (B) This idea was also offered in 1958 by the classicist Robert M. Cook. "... it may be reasonably inferred that coinage was invented to make a large number of uniform payments of considerable value in a portable and durable form, and that the person making the payments was the king of Lydia. One solution suggests itself, that the purpose of coinage was the payment of mercenaries." (C) An interesting variant to this theory comes from Martin J. Price. In 1986, Price claimed that the first coinage was not payment per se, but a _bonus_. "... it is clear that the theory proposed by R. M. Cook and now widely accepted, that coinage was to provide payments for mercenaries does not fit the facts... At this stage in the economy payments in metals for service was not normal. We can gain some idea of the practice of employment from [the Iliad and the Odyssey], and it would seem that employees were normally given board and lodging in return for service, and 'payment' was received at the end of service by way of a bonus, which could presumably, but not necessarily be given in metals... [As] bonus payments, the coins are more akin to gifts (or medals) than to coins as we know them." I suggest another theory. I see these as the badges of a conspiracy. Before you can overthrow the king, you have to have a plan and communicate it. And you can't get caught at it. The earliest known coins were unearthed at the foundation to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. Of these, the least developed were mere pellets with a punch on them, as from a broken nail. They look like lumps of electrum. Yet, they could serve as a way for people to identify each other. Merchant and mercenary could easily have been the same man in an Ionian town. Bibliography 1. Kraay, Colin M. Archaic and Classical Greek Coins. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 2. Ure, P. N. The Origins of Tyranny. New York, Russell and Russell, 1962 3. Cook, R. M. "Speculations on the Origins of Coinage," Historia. Wiesbaden, 1958. 4. Grierson, Philip. The Origins of Money. London: Athlone Press, 1977. 5. Price, Martin J., "Thoughts on the beginning of coinage," J. Price. Brooke, C. N. L, et al., eds. Studies in Numismatic Method Presented to Philip Grierson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. 6. Marotta, Michael. "Some Questions on the Origins of Coinage," Classical Numismatic Review. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1994.
Some of the latest thinking on the subject is that coins were an outgrowth of tokens. According to this theory the ancients would use small tokens to keep track of their farm animals. One token=one cow. As time went on and herds grew they would use a different token to represent five cows and another for 10 geese. Soon they began thinking of these as the property itself and the idea of money was born.
Tokens of Plenty Good point, Cladking. The researcher there is Denise Schmandt-Besserat and you can find her mammoth two-volumes "The Origin of Writing" and "How Writing Began" in a university library or large public library. Her thesis is that these tokens were the beginnings of abstract communication about wealth. From the tokens came the pictographs from which cuneiform derived. We always used to believe that pictographs (Ox = Aleph; House = Beth...) were first. But they show too much conceptual development. Something came before them. She found it. That was about 4000 BC. Coins were invented about 650 BC. "Money" as we know it probably came from 8000 BC. Wheat was the first form of money: desirable, divisible, storable. Metallic money is yet another story.
