The Sumerian shekel
Mesopotamian accounting tablets recorded quantities of grain, silver, and labor in standardized units called shekels. One shekel was roughly 8.3 grams of silver, or its equivalent in barley. The shekel was not a physical coin. It was a unit of weight used to measure value inside temple and state records. Taxes, wages, and temple offerings were all denominated in it.
The shekel predates coinage by roughly 2,500 years. Babylonian loan contracts from this period are essentially indistinguishable in form from modern ones, right down to the terms for interest and collateral. Commercial law is older than metal money by thousands of years.
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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