Livestock as currency
Cattle, sheep, and camels served as units of account across Mesopotamia and the Levant. Dowries, fines, bride prices, and taxes were paid in living animals. Hittite law codes from the second millennium BC set exact penalties: 30 sheep for killing a free man's horse, five shekels of silver equivalent for a lost ox. The Latin word 'pecunia', meaning money, derives from 'pecus', cattle. The English word 'fee' traces back to Old English 'feoh', also meaning cattle.
Livestock was a surprisingly good medium of exchange: it reproduced on its own, came in standard units, and could walk itself to market. It was a bad store of value only when it died.
01 · Barter & Commodity Money
For most of human history there was no money, only exchange. Grain for tools, cattle for labor, shells for both. Commodity money emerged when a few goods — cowrie shells, cattle, barley, salt — became widely enough accepted to act as intermediaries between trades. They were expensive to forge, useful to hold, and recognizable across cultures.
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