People in Shang Dynasty can make exquisite bronze products, why not use bronze currency?

As an ideal alloy material, bronze can be used for almost any object: ritual vessels, weapons, tools, farm tools, decorations and so on. Therefore, bronze was an ideal universal equivalent material at that time.

Before the birth of coinage, people chose bronze as a universal equivalent, based on weight. Later, the official stereotyped currency in China chose bronze as the main material, which has been used for more than two thousand years.

But businessmen can make so many exquisite bronze products, why not use bronze money and use exquisite shells as money?

Different from most modern people's understanding, jade and pottery were widely used in daily life at that time, and bronzes were used by a few people, probably less than smokers in modern society. The largest bronze ware in Shang Dynasty is not "Simuwu Dafang Ding", but "Tongren Chen Bing". "Big Chen Bing, heavy, swallowing wood and spitting smoke from mining".

In Shang Dynasty, bronze was mainly used as bronze containers, weapons and instruments of torture. The use of bronze ritual vessels has a certain combination relationship. The shape of bronze ware gradually got rid of the influence of pottery and began to form its own shape norms. The main decorative themes of bronzes, such as animal face pattern, dragon pattern and bird pattern, have been widely used and have begun to develop into mature decorative techniques.

In the Western Zhou Dynasty, bronze was used as money. For example, bronze blocks and bronze axes that appeared as money all appeared at that time.