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Money is the product of commodity exchange. At the end of primitive society, the earliest currency was physical currency. Generally speaking, nomadic people use livestock and hides to realize the function of money, while agricultural people use grains, fabrics, farm tools, pottery, seashells, pearls and jade as the earliest physical money.
Origin and origin
According to archaeological excavations, a large number of pottery pots were unearthed as sacrificial objects in the sites of the late Neolithic Age. Dawenkou culture buried a large number of pig heads and jawbones, indicating that pigs and pottery had played the role of monetary wealth in the late primitive society. But as we all know, the physical currency that was widely circulated in ancient times was a "shell".
As physical currency, cattle, sheep, pigs and other livestock are inseparable, grains are perishable, pearls and jade are too few, and knives and shovels are heavy, so people finally choose seashells as physical currency in practice. Seashells can be used as neck ornaments, which are valuable and easy to carry and count, so they have been selected as the main currency in the long-term commodity exchange.
In the archaeological excavation, a large number of natural shellfish were unearthed from the sites of Xia and Shang Dynasties, and shellfish were used as physical currency until the Spring and Autumn Period. Therefore, most Chinese characters related to wealth and value in China are related to the word "Bei". Such as: expensive, capital, greed, poverty, wealth, purchase, etc.
China is the first country in the world to use coins. Three thousand years ago, many "copper-free shells" were unearthed in tombs in the late Shang Dynasty, which were the most primitive metal coins. By the end of the Western Zhou Dynasty, in addition to shell coins, there were also some metal weighing coins such as loose copper blocks and copper ingots without a certain shape, which were also unearthed in archaeological excavations.
To sum up, in the late primitive society of Zhixia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the main form of money was physical money, and natural shellfish were widely circulated. In the later period, a small amount of metal weighing currency and coinage appeared, which was the period of currency germination and formation.
The development history of China's currency
In China's Chinese characters, most of the words related to value come from "Bei". It can be seen that shellfish is the earliest currency in China. With the rapid development of commodity exchange, the demand for money is increasing, and shells can no longer meet people's needs. People began to imitate shells with copper.
The appearance of copper shell is a significant evolution from natural currency to artificial currency in the ancient currency history of China. With the extensive use of artificial coins, seashells, a natural currency, gradually withdrew from the currency stage in China.