forms of money. By 687 BC, the Lyd- ians fashioned the first coins. They set up the first permanent retail shops— today’s equivalent of a strip mall. Greek historian Herodotus rebuked their gross commercialism. But with- in the next century, his own Greece began minting coins.
In the next thousand years, com- merce flourished into an international affair. Mixed among achievements in exploration and printing were mile- stones in commerce: inflation, coun- terfeiting, plundering foreign monies, stealing domestic monies, debasing coinage, and legalizing interest.
After experimenting with many different money mediums—gold, sil- ver, copper, then gold again—more and more countries began adopting paper banknotes. China had been using paper money regularly for more
than 500 years, starting after a copper shortage in the 10th century AD, but it wasn’t until Italian explorer Marco Polo visited the Far East that Europe began to take notice.
People were very suspicious of those paper banknotes at first. Persia, Japan, and India were all unsuccessful at cir- culating the flimsy currency. In fact, Britain actually forbade American colonists from issuing paper money when some colonies (ahem, Rhode Island) recklessly over issued the ten- der. Ironically, it was the colonists’ ability to print legal tender that ulti- mately funded the Revolutionary War, even if the Revolutionary War made most of those banknotes worthless.
Promises, Promises Despite the reluctance of select societies to move into modern
commerce (in 1910, the Kirghiz people in the Russian Empire were still using horse as their main monetary unit—with sheep and lambskin as small change), the rest of the world was moving forward in large strides. By 1890, for example, checks accounted for 90 percent of the total value of transactions in the United States.
In the mid 1900s, commerce went through plastic surgery in the form of the credit card. Originally marketed to traveling salesmen, credit cards were created by local businesses to elimi- nate the amount of cash they had to have on hand. The Diners Club credit card was created in 1950 for use in restaurants; within the decade, Ameri- can Express and Bank of America issued their first credit cards.
For the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe, even the minutia of being a responsible citizen is captured in the code of law. What happens if you set a forest on fire? 100 lashes. What if your bees escape and attack a neighbor’s animals? If the animal is crippled, you’ll have to replace it; if the beast is killed, you’ll be on the hook for two replacements.
250 BC
600
Defamation of character isn’t just a modern concept. In ancient India, mocking someone for being blind, deformed, crazy, or impotent can cost you some coin, regardless of the truth of the statement. Luckily if you’re simply drunk when you slander your fellow citizens, your fine will be cut in half.
886
When a man is murdered, the Vikings demand that wergeld (monetary reparations) be paid to the family or kinsmen of the victim.
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