Money Never Started With Trading

Money Never Started With Trading

Picture the very first time humans used money. Most people picture a trade, a fish for an axe, an axe for a basket.

That story is called barter, and it's in almost every textbook. Many anthropologists say they've never found a whole society that actually ran on it. So if money didn't begin with trading, what did it begin with? The answer many researchers now favour is something far quieter: not a coin, not a note, but a memory. I owe you one, and you remember that I do.

This is the story of how a memory of debt turned into coins, then paper, then banks, and eventually the ledger you tap your card against today.