With the popularity of smart devices, "money" is no longer a coin, nor is it a piece of paper, but a string of numbers. You don't need to bring money with you when you go out, you only need to bring a mobile phone to complete most of the payments. This was naturally unimaginable in ancient times, and for a long time before the advent of coins, ancestors still used some strange things as currency, such as shells.
China, as one of the world's four major ancient civilizations, is also the earliest use of currency countries, as early as 4,000 years ago in the Xia Shang period, there has been a currency, when the main currency is the "shell coin", people use ropes to connect the shells, and then used for commodity interaction, which is the most primitive prototype of the shell coin.
The "Book of History and Equalization" records that "the road of agricultural, industrial and commercial transactions is passable, and the coin of the turtle and shell money knife cloth is flourishing", and the shell coin as a primitive currency is not only recorded in ancient books, but also unearthed and confirmed in many cultural relics. Many people may wonder here, there are so many shells on the seashore, why don't poor people just pick up shells to get rich?
The reason is actually very simple, first of all, the first reason, shell coins are not only the use of shells, but also the imitation of shells, such as stone shells, jade shells, bone shells, and even later there are shells cast in bronze materials, which can be called the original prototype of "copper money".
Whether it is copper shells or jade shells, the production materials are not cheap. If ordinary people want to imitate it alone, the lower part is only afraid of being more valuable than the coin itself, and in the late Yin Shang and Western Zhou, copper imitation shells with no writing were found, and after the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, they evolved into copper shell ant nose coins with inscriptions, which is more difficult to counterfeit.
The second reason is that before the bronze shell did not appear, although the shell has been circulated as currency, but it has not yet been fully popularized, many places still believe in equivalent exchanges, such as cloth, shovels, turtle shells, etc., and even other currencies, so shell coins have not completely dominated the market.
In fact, just like the later silver, TV series can often be seen, but in reality, there are very few people who really use it, generally replaced by consistent copper coins, because the ancient mining technology is not developed enough, silver is still a scarce thing, shells are the same, before the emergence of stone shells, jade shells, bone shells, copper shells, the use is still relatively small.
The third reason is also the same, not all shells can be used as money, money has a face value size, shells also have high value and low value, to those that are relatively rare, such as tabby shells, and ring shells are more valuable. These are not something you can pick up casually.
Take the ring shell, generally only in the water temperature is relatively low, but also only in a specific sea area can be seen, the surface of this shell around a circle is very beautiful, plus relatively rare, so the value is relatively high.
In fact, if you think about it, you can understand that if you pick up a piece of shell at random and use it as a coin, then the residents living in the coastal zone simply do not fish, and picking up two shells a day can fill their stomachs, the market will soon be saturated, and the value of shell coins will become lower and lower, which is obviously unreasonable. A smart person will not pick it up, because even if he spends a day, he may not be able to pick up the "shell coins" that can be spent.