I usher you, esteemed readers, into the very dawn of human economic thought—an epoch which holds for the history of money the same significance that the invention of writing bears for literature. In this chapter, an object of daily utility, a handful of barley, or a seashell ceases to be merely a common gift of nature or a tool, becoming instead the vessel for the first abstract value. Together, we shall trace the fascinating trajectory wherein amorphous lumps of bullion and fragments of hacksilver began to organize the commerce of the most ancient civilizations, ultimately awakening in humanity a fervent necessity to formalize this wealth with the sovereign’s definitive mark of guarantee.

Methodological note: This chapter is not confined within the rigid chronological boundaries of antiquity. It classifies the stages of economic development (modes of exchange and standards of value) that emerged and persisted across various regions of the globe at disparate times—from the III millennium BCE in Mesopotamia to the XIX century in Africa.