Bartering goods seems to have been the beginning of
all trade. Merchants would have to carry with them items
they thought people elsewhere would want, and then the
merchants would have to fi nd goods they wanted and dicker
with other merchants until they could work out a trade.
Such dickering could take weeks, and the merchant night
not fi nd anyone who had what he wanted who also wanted
what the merchant had. Produce could spoil. Workers could
quit if they were not paid. Th e trade goods could end up be-
ing dumped.
In many parts of the world, people hit upon the idea of
using as a medium of exchange something everyone liked but
could carry on their persons. It had to be available in enough
quantity that many people could use it; otherwise, it would be
useless because not enough people would know what it was
worth, but it could not be too numerous, or it would cause
infl ation, which would make it worthless because it would
take too many make even a small purchase. It is not known
what became the fi rst money, but in much of the world, sea
shells, especially cowry shells, served as cash. Th is may seem
strange, but a fi sherman mining for cowry shells is not much
diff erent from someone digging for gold. In some places
metal became valuable once people learned how to use metal
to make useful tools. For instance, in ancient China, bronze
shovels and knives were used like money, and when the Chi-
nese started minting coins, the coins oft en looked like small
shovels or knives. Th e Chinese had an agricultural economy,
and bronze tools such as shovels and knives would have had
universal value in their culture.
Archaeologists seem to agree that coins as they are now
thought of were invented in Anatolia, probably by the Hit-
tites but perhaps by the Lydians in about 600 b.c.e. Th e idea
caught on quickly in other parts of the world. Th e basic idea
was that certain metals had agreed-upon value; if coins con-
taining a certain amount of valuable metal were available,
people could trade them for goods without worrying about
trying to persuade someone with sheepskins to take ceramic
vessels in exchange. Purchasers could exchange the coins for
the sheepskins and leave sellers of the sheepskins to worry
about what they wanted to buy.
AFRICA
BY OLUTAYO CHARLES ADESINA
Th e concept of money, which can be defi ned as commodities
or tokens that serve as measures or media of exchange in eco-
nomic transactions, has been well established in Africa since
ancient times. Th e continent had some of the most varied
forms of money currencies in the preindustrial world. Early
on, Africans developed dynamic commercial relationships
that required the adoption of money. Th e particular type of
money was dictated by the type and scale of commercial ac-
tivities. Th e money in use ranged from coins to copper ingots,
raffi a cloth, beads, cattle, and cowrie shells. Other objects
used and accepted as means of payment included symbolic
tools like daggers, representations of valuable objects, and
precious metals.
In diff erent parts of Africa, market and trading trans-
actions were accomplished by means of currencies, though
few societies possessed the market or exchange systems that
required a universally acceptable form of currency. In other
societies barter arrangements appear to have characterized
the daily economic life. Historical records in Africa have af-
fi rmed the existence of several forms of exchange within a
particular system of markets. One early form was the simple
exchange mechanism known variously as the barter or the
silent trade. Th is took the form of the exchange of goods for
goods or the exchange of goods for services. In the exchange
of goods and services, diviners and priests, drummers and
singers were paid with goats, oil palm, and roosters. Th ese
transactions were carried on by people who might or might
not have known each other. Th ere was the common account
of the Carthaginians’ silent trade for West African gold. Th e
system involved a lot of uncertainty in the value of goods. It
also required that a person locate someone who wanted the
particular good being off ered. Barter was quite limited com-
pared with trade with money.
Th e earliest evidence of the cultural use of money oc-
curs in Egypt with the adoption of cowrie shells as currency.
Th e trans-Saharan trade that began between North and West
Africa, around 1000 b.c.e. spread the use of cowrie shells as
currency. Th e trade expanded signifi cantly with the infl uence
of the Carthaginians from about the fi ft h century b.c.e. Car-
thage, the great trading nation established by the Phoenicians
in 814 b.c.e., began to issue minted coins in the fourth cen-
tury b.c.e. Th e circulation of money received greater impe-
tus from the Romans, following their expansion into North
Africa three centuries later. Gold and cowries were the major
currencies, and this trans-Saharan trade might have been
responsible for the diff usion of cowries into the interior of
Africa as far afi eld as the Niger Bend.
Ancient African monies took other forms in addition to
cowrie shells. Livestock and plant products were utilized as
money in diff erent societies at diff erent epochs. Cattle became
a vital form of money, most especially in pastoral societies.
Pastoral communities especially in East and southern Africa
interacted with and exchanged some goods with hunter-gath-
erer communities.
Ma ny g roups i n A f r ic a a lso used meta l l ic cu r rencies such
as gold and silver coins. Th is use owed much to Roman and
Greek infl uences. Th e earliest coins in Africa can be traced to
the sixth century b.c.e. in Cyrenaica on the northern coast of
Africa (modern-day Libya). Silver and electrum (an alloy of
gold and silver) coins were in use here. One of the coins was
the Valentine coin in circulation between 500 and 480 b.c.e.
Embossed in the coin was the image of silphium, a plant used
as a spice and contraceptive that was quite important to the
Cyrenaic economy. About 25 b.c.e. in Mauretania a bronze
coin depicted Cleopatra Selene, the queen of Mauretania who
was the daughter of Cleopatra VII by Marcus Antonius. One752 money and coinage: Africa