NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 7were invented. Even these re-
cent findings in China have
not settled arguments about
which civilization did it first.
Of greater importance than
the “who came first” debate, is
the academic question of how
monetary value was deter-
mined and held by people in
these different societies. Until
recently, conventional think-
ing about the history of mon-
ey was based on Lydian coins,
whose value was derived from
their composition (their coins
were made of precious metals),
and backed by a stamp that
guaranteed its composition.
“Chinese coinage is fun-
damentally different, and we
need to take that into account
to understand the history ofcoinage,” said Lyce Jankowski,
a numismatist specializing in
East Asian coinage and cura-
tor at the Royal Museum of
Mariemont in Belgium (Jan-
kowski was not part of the
Guanzhuang research team).
“The spade is not supported
by any metallic value. You have
neither the name of the ruler,
nor... the state. In that sense,
since its creation, Chinesecoinage has a ‘fiduciary’ ele-
ment in it.”
The Guanzhuang archae-
ologists theorize that the
trust, or “fiduciary” element
in the spade coin came from
the group affiliated with the
foundry, be it “merchant
groups, a local authority or
even the... Zheng State.”—Braden PhillipsPAPER REVOLUTION
CHINA’S EARLIEST CURRENCY was not coins or
paper, but cowrie shells. Advances in metallurgy
around 1000 b.c. led to the first bronze coins, which
took the form of valuable tools, such as knives or
spades. Round coins appeared in the fourth centu-
ry b.c., made from base metals. The Chinese fiduciary
system contrasted with the Mediterranean world,
whose coins were made from gold and silver that un-
derwrote their value. In imperial China confidence
that bronze coins would be accepted was established
through a parallel currency of gold ingots. In the 11th
century a copper shortage led the Song dynasty to
adopt promissory notes of the kind used by mer-
chants, a development that led to the world’s first
paper banknotes. The Yuan and early Ming dynasties
in the 13th and 14th centuries would also use paper
notes, making China the world’s first society to run a
fully fledged paper economy.not a small-scale, sporadic
experiment, but rather a
well-planned and organized
process.”
Many early Chinese coins,
like the ones minted at the
Guanzhuang site, were shaped
like small spades. The Guan-
zhuang coins are not as old as
coins from Lydia, the research-
ers note, and these are not the
first Chinese spade coins to
have been found.
Question of Value
Most scholars who study the
origins of ancient money be-
lieve that minting was pio-
neered in three different re-
gions—Lydia, China, and In-
dia—but there is debate about
where coinage and minting
LEFT: CHINESE KNIFE COINS, FIFTH TO THIRD CENTURIES B.C. ALAMY
RIGHT: A 14TH-CENTURY BANKNOTE, MING DYNASTY SCALA, FLORENCE