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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Saor Alba, post: 741407, member: 21607&quot;]I don&#039;t know that they were so primitive really, in fact the Greeks had knowledge that was largely lost later on due to wars etc.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I like to think that this is perhaps one of the older forms of money used by Greek colonists in Olbia(now S. Ukraine):</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://www.scottishmoney.net/blacksea/delfin2" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>It is conjectured that these dolphins started out as some little amulets to the river god Borysthenes, but evolved into usage as monetary instruments later on.&nbsp; This piece is conjectured to have been created ca. 650 BC.&nbsp; Unfortunately I no longer own this piece, my daughter coveted it and traded a Moldavia-Wallacia 2 Para from 1773 for it.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is one of the world&#039;s earliest coins in the strict definition of the term:</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://scottishmoney.net/greece/miletos.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>These little Miletos, Ionia 1/12th staters date from roughly the same time period, the 7th century BC - and are fairly common and readily available to collectors - unlike the Lydian coins that are purported to be the first.&nbsp; They have a nice lion motif with a small dolphin on the front, and a fascinating star pattern on the reverse.&nbsp; I think I paid somewhere like $25 or $30 for this a few years ago.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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