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Entry 37 of 240Invention

The Invention of Coinage

c. 620 BCE/Anatolia/Lydia
Today Western Turkey (Sardis, the Lydian capital)Span Kingdom of Lydia · c. 1200–546 BCE

In the kingdom of Lydia, someone struck lumps of electrum — a natural gold-silver alloy — with a state mark guaranteeing their weight and purity. Before coins, every transaction required weighing metal and arguing about its quality; a coin let strangers trade without trusting each other, because they could both trust the stamp. Money became portable, countable, and taxable, and markets could form among people who had never met. The Greeks adopted it immediately, and within a century coinage had spread across the Mediterranean.

◆ Worth knowingLydia's last king was Croesus, whose wealth from these first coins made him a byword for riches 2,600 years later. He asked an oracle whether to attack Persia and was told he would destroy a great empire. He attacked. The empire he destroyed was his own.
◆ The mechanismTrade-route shift

The path or medium of exchange moves, and a place or power rises or declines because it sits on or off the new route.

Also: State formation & institutional founding · Monetary debasement

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