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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 252, member: 57463&quot;]<b>Tokens of Plenty</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Good point, Cladking.&nbsp; The researcher there is Denise Schmandt-Besserat and you can find her mammoth two-volumes &quot;The Origin of Writing&quot; and &quot;How Writing Began&quot; in a university library or large public library.</p><p><br /></p><p>Her thesis is that these tokens were the beginnings of abstract communication about wealth.&nbsp; From the tokens came the pictographs from which cuneiform derived.&nbsp; We always used to believe that pictographs (Ox = Aleph; House = Beth...) were first.&nbsp; But they show too much conceptual development.&nbsp; Something came before them.&nbsp; She found it.</p><p><br /></p><p>That was about 4000 BC.&nbsp; Coins were invented about 650 BC.&nbsp; &quot;Money&quot; as we know it probably came from 8000 BC.&nbsp; Wheat was the first form of money: desirable, divisible, storable.&nbsp; Metallic money is yet another story.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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