TechnologyThe Middle East
Coinage
Value becomes something you count instead of weigh
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Coinage is a technology of trust: it works only because someone guarantees it, and thereby shifts power to whoever mints. The Greeks took it up quickly, and within a century each city-state had its own. It created something socially new as well — wages could be paid, debts settled exactly, and wealth detached from land.
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In Lydia in today's Turkey, the king began stamping lumps of metal with a mark guaranteeing weight and purity. People no longer had to weigh silver each time. Trade grew faster, and an entirely new kind of economy became possible.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org