The European Union was set up to make a strong trading block that would rival the U.S. In the beginning there were standards set that each country had to meet, before entry was allowed. I remember all the problems that they had with the value of each countries' money. The money had to have a backing, a value that was attached to it. Some countries just couldn't seem to get to this point and others, like Britain, didn't want to use a common currency, but preferred to use their own. It turned out that both the Euro, the common currency and the British Pound have increased in value over the U.S. dollar. To this day, no one knows if Britain will ever accept the Euro as its currency. Right now the British are saying that the only way they would ever accept the Euro as their currency, is if it will bring more jobs and money to them. Things could change, however, since the people have been promised a vote on this subject some time in the future.

Changing the currency of a country is a big deal. At one time there was no standardized currency in the United States, that only came about during the Civil War, when the Union ordered it. At that point there were really two currencies, the Union currency and the Confederate currency. Before that time we used one of THOUSANDS of bills printed by banks all over the nation. There were so many different bills that it was almost impossible to know if you had a counterfeit or not and those guys must have been making a great living for the rate of counterfeiting was extremely high. Counterfeiting has been with us since the first money was introduced. Well I guess that I shouldn't exaggerate since the first money was believed to be sea shells or even beads, which later moved on to cattle and crops. The big change came around 3000 B.C. when Mesopotamia developed banking. While there were precious metals before this, they could now be deposited in storage areas in safe places in temples and palaces and thus banking was born.

The First Coin. It was minted in Lydia about 687 B.C. We are very fortunate to have a photo of it.
This photo is in the Wikimedia Commons and is under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Did you know that there were some civilizations that never used money? An example of this is the Incas. Ancient records have been found showing that people who worked, were paid in grain and salt. I guess this grain and salt could be used as currency in a sort of bartering system. It wasn't long before money that people could trust began to appear. Cappadocia produced silver ingots and guaranteed their purity. This made the ingots acceptable by most as currency. This was around 2250 B.C. Evidence of very ancient beads have been found. It is possible that our ancestors back over 20,000 years ago used these beads as money. Traditional money did not catch on right away, in in the most advanced societies. The Chinese used Cowrie shells for money in 2300 B.C. For some reason, these shells were very popular as currency and their use continued in some parts of Africa right into the 20th century. Around 1000 B.C. a strange thing happened in China, at least I think that it is strange. Metal models of important tools were used as an exchange medium. If you had a model of a hoe or knife, it could be used as currency.

It is said that the first coins appeared in roughly 687 B.C. Herodotus was a famous Greek historian who lived somewhere around 484 B.C. to 425 B.C. No one is quite sure of the exact time. He stated the the Lydians, who produced these coins in a country named Lydia (Western Turkey}, were guilty of gross commercialism. Maybe he got angered because the Lydians are also said to be the first to open permanent retail stores. This was a very foreign concept to people of that time and the Lydians may have seemed very greedy to others. It wasn't long after this that China again enters the picture. They decided to create a round coin from base metal and use it as currency. I guess carrying around those big shells was just too much trouble. I wonder what happened if you broke one, was it worth anything? It is believed that the first Chinese coinage could have happened as early as 600 B.C. and the coins produced were the beginning of modern coinage. Only low value coins were produced at the time.

Ancient Roman Coin Showing Caligula Sacrificing
Photo Source: Said To Be In Public Domain

Ancient Greece, despite Herodotus, adopted coinage around 600 B.C. also. Before this, nails were used in some places in Greece as currency. I guess you didn't dare use them in building, because they were far too valuable. Now back to the Lydians. They had another great idea, why not create a gold coin and a silver coin? Sounds good to me. Around fifty years later the Persians decided that coins were a good idea and began to produce their own. The Greeks used mainly silver in their coins, while the Persians preferred gold. Athens had a silver mine where 20,000 slaves were forced to toil. The Spartans captured the mine and released the slaves. Because of this, the Athenians were forced to mint bronze coins with a silver coating, similar to the coins we use in the U.S. today.

It might be interesting to note that when the Gauls attacked Rome in 390 B.C., it was the geese that were kept where the city's money reserves were, that alerted the army. Because of this, a shrine was built by the Romans to Moneta, the goddess of warning and that is where the word for money and mint are derived. In 360 B.C. Phillip II of Macedonia minted far more coins than his country required. One of the uses of these coins was for propaganda, since they depicted him as the victory in a chariot race in the olympics of 356 B.C. In 336 B.C. Alexander the Great set the exchange rate of silver and gold at 1 unit of gold equals 10 units of silver.

Medieval Coin From 1536
Photo Source: Said To Be In Public Domain

Everyone had coins, what about a modern bank? In 323 B.C. one was set up in Alexandria. The central bank was located in that city and it had branches. You could transfer money from one bank to another without any money being used, just like you can today.

As for paper money, the first bills were said to have been printed in China around 800 A.D. This is a point of contention as some others state that it was 1400 A.D. We also find dates such as 600 A.D. and 1200 A.D. There is usually a caveat that states that this was the first true paper money. It wasn't until paper money was printed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1690s, that paper money was here to stay.