In 1642, a law was passed in Virginia saying that tobacco was to be the only currency in the colony and although a form of paper money was introduced later, tobacco remained the basis of the Virginian currency for over a century. This is not as strange as it might seem. History shows that almost anything can become money provided that people want it.
Back in prehistoric times, sharp stones for making axes were used as money by Stone Age people. | 1 |
Later, when metal became more widely used; pieces of bronze were made into small knives, shirts or spades, and these could be exchanged for the objects they represented.
In more recent times, some of the most varied items have been used as money, such as dogs’ teeth in New Guinea or whales’ teeth in the Pacific Islands. But the greatest success story among strange currencies were undoubtedly cowrie shells, which for many centuries were accepted as payment throughout much of Africa and Asia.
| 2 | This had been used in some parts of the world for well over a thousand years. Paper was invented by a Chinese government minister, T’sai Lun in AD 105. | 3 |
This worked very well and when the famous traveller Marco Polo visited the empire from 1275 to 1292, during the rule of Kublaj Khan, he marvelled at its sophisticated use throughout the emperor’s lands.
One of the most successful forms of currency was invented during the rule of the Chinese emperor Wu Ti. When he found himself short of cash, he made a plan to raise money from his wealthy noblemen. First of all, the emperor collected all the white deer in the country and kept them in a royal park. Then he passed a law saying that anyone who wanted to come to the emperor’s court must wear a white mask made of deer skin. | 4 |
In time, the noblemen who had bought masks would offer to sell them to colleagues in return for goods and services, and in this way the deerskins became a type of currency.
In contrast, one of the least successful currencies of all time was the German mark in the 1920s. | 5 |
At the height of the crisis, when an inhabitant of Berlin went into a local cafe and ordered a coffee priced at 5,000 marks, by the time he came to pay the bill, it had risen to 8,000 marks. Prices were rising at 60 per cent an hour. In the end the currency became completely worthless. | 6 |
This, of course, was the system that had been used thousands of years ago, long before money was even invented.