What did silver look like in ancient times? It was full of tooth marks, and I couldn't recognize it when I fell to the ground
Although money is not omnipotent, but without it is impossible, so from ancient times people invented money, which can be exchanged for value coins, until the commodity economy developed to a certain extent, there was a special silver two, in many of the current costume TV series, we will also see that the money used by people in ancient times is the kind of silver dangling silver, like a gold dollar treasure shape, the work is very good. But are really historical winning words really that long? In fact, it is not, the ancient silver looks very ugly, the top is uneven, there are many shapes similar to tooth marks, and it does not look flash at all, even if it falls on the ground, it is difficult to see.
As early as the Han Dynasty in China, there have been silver two currencies, which is a form of weighing currency in ancient China, which developed to the peak in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the ancient silver was made of real gold and silver, so both weight and value are very real.
To take a very simple example, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, a pound of pork only needs 20 yuan to buy, and an acre of good land, only seven or eight silver can be purchased, which can be seen that the purchasing power of silver two in ancient times is still very high, but because his value is relatively high, so the general common people are rarely used, only merchants or princes and nobles will frequently use silver two, ordinary people mostly use literary money or copper coins. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the frequency of silver use was slightly reduced, and people were accustomed to buying items with copper dollars.
We often see in TV dramas that the shape of silver is similar to the shape of a boat, but in fact, the ancient silver is not ship-shaped, nor is it as neat as we see in TV dramas, and the very neat silver is not completely absent, but the amount is very small. Ancient silver ingots were highly valuable, and usually one could be worth a month's salary. Although the real ancient silver is not so standard yuanbao type, but the shape and yuanbao are similar, are the kind of thin in the middle, two wide shapes, sometimes you will see a whole piece of silver.
And the ancient silver is not so shiny, people usually add white flowers in front of the description of silver, but in fact, because the ancient refining technology is not superb, so the silver contains a lot of impurities, so that its gloss texture is not so good, will not be as shiny as in the TV series, even if thrown on the ground, may not be recognized, and there will be a lot of things similar to tooth marks on it, because the simplest way for ancients to identify silver is to bite on the teeth. Think about as long as the silver circulation once, it will be bitten, how unhygienic, looking at it makes people sick to the stomach, netizens are also wondering: how did the ancient people get down to the mouth?