"Money is something outside the body", but for thousands of years, people have been pursuing an immutable law, that is, "making money", whether it is the ancient war of plundering the city, or the continuous development of modern science and technology, tracing its source, is for a word "money".
The history of money has been more than three thousand years, the earliest Xia Dynasty is not popular currency, just the exchange between things, the earliest currency was born in the Shang Dynasty three thousand years ago, the currency used by the Shang Dynasty is the sea shell, the sea shell is produced in the sea, so why didn't the ancestors at that time go to the sea to pick up sea shells to make themselves rich?
Sea shells are colorful and smooth, strong and durable, generally as a currency of sea shellfish, from the variety point of view, large shellfish have tabby baby, Awen shellfish, yellow (sound of the same genus) spotted eye shell, snake head eyeball shell, small sea shellfish are mainly cargo shells, date shellfish, these shellfish are born in the East China Sea, the South China Sea reefs.
In order to be able to convert, the Shang Dynasty implemented the "Pengbei" system, 1 Peng is 5 large sea shells or 10 small sea shells, that is to say, a large sea shell is equivalent to 2 small sea shells, the sea shells are very valuable in the Shang Dynasty, which is a very expensive wealth, and at that time the Shang Dynasty was also very popular to use the sea shells as burial goods.
In the good tomb of the wife of Wang Wuding, the first female god of war merchant in China, in addition to 755 pieces of martyrdom jade such as honor guards, tools, supplies, ornaments, miscellaneous utensils, etc., there are more than 7,000 shell coins, according to proportional conversion, at least 700 friends, at that time 700 friends were worth 90 fields, which shows the huge wealth.
Since sea shells are currency, why didn't the ancestors who lived in the East and South China Seas go to the sea to pick up sea shells as currency? In fact, these circulating sea shells are issued by the state, and the craftsmen will re-polish the shellfish, and there are grinding holes at both ends, which is easy to carry through the holes.
Although there are traces of artificial polishing of shells, but the ancestors are good at polishing, shells and no anti-counterfeiting marks, want to do imitation shells is actually ok, but the shells that can act as currency need to be complete enough, and there is a division of types, and there are very few shellfish that can really act as currency.
In the middle and late Shang Dynasty, the population increased, agriculture progressed, handicrafts developed, and the frequent exchange of goods and goods, which greatly increased the demand for shellfish, in order to be able to meet the continued circulation of currency, there was imitation shellfish, imitation shell is made of stone, bone, mussel, pottery imitation of small sea shells, but the real value is still pearl jade shell.
Pearl jade shell is the highest value of the currency, ordinary people simply can not afford to use, after the pearl jade shell, began to circulate copper shell, copper shell is the ancestor of metal currency, whether it is copper shell or pearl jade shell price is high, want to imitate must find a large amount of copper or jewelry.
But metal mining is basically in the hands of the nobility, and even if a large amount of copper is stolen, it will cause investigation, and before it is copied, I am afraid that it will be caught.