Back to the beginnning
Come back in time with us to discover why currency
was invented
Why was currency needed?
Around 9000 years B.C. Stone Age people discovered farming
and began to trade. They found that by keeping cattle in pens
and growing crops, they could produce more food than they could
eat. What's more, they could ‘sell’ the food they
didn't need in order to ‘buy’ other things. For
example, if they had a cow and needed wheat, they would exchange
the cow for wheat. In the same way, if they had wheat and needed
a cow, they would make an exchange.
What were the problems of bartering?
- You needed to find someone who wanted what you had and
had what you wanted.
- You had to find a way of making up the differences in
amounts. If the two things didn't have the same value, it
wasn't easy to divide them.
- Many 'goods' grew old or rotted and didn't keep their
value.
- They weren't easy to carry.
- It was difficult to compare the price of a good against
all other goods. The possibilities were endless…
So a general measure was needed to be able to compare the
value of these goods more easily. This is where currency comes
in.
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