The emergence of exchanges

From Australopithecus to Modern Man

History of Coinage

From Australopithecus to Modern Man

Why start in the Neolithic
Sedentarization and its consequences
Chronology of human evolution
A Chronology of Human History

Why start in the Neolithic

Why go all the way back to the Neolithic to talk about money? The answer is simple: we can't fully understand the emergence of money without also examining the rise of civilizations themselves. To understand why the first monetary systems came into being, we need to understand what led nomadic hunter-gatherer groups to settle down.

A tribe with no division of labor, no specialization, where individuals are responsible for producing their own needs, simply has no need for money. Likewise, an agricultural community practicing only subsistence farming, where each person cultivates their own food, does not yet feel the need for a common medium of exchange.

Sedentarization and its consequences

Starting our exploration in the Neolithic period is a logical choice. We'll see how sedentarization gradually gave rise to villages, then cities, and finally great civilizations. It was this sedentarization and the production of food surpluses that made labor specialization possible, creating the fertile ground essential for the emergence and evolution of the first monetary concepts.

Just as human interactions give rise to language, money can appear naturally in the course of a civilization's formation and organization, a tendency that is not universal, as seen in societies like the Incas and Spartans. Ultimately, whether a society develops money depends entirely on its specific social and economic organization.

Chronology of human evolution

But first, let's look at an even broader historical context.

To do this, I'm now going to present a chronological list of key events, relating the development of money to other major human advances like the cooking of food, the invention of the wheel, the domestication of animals and cereals, the building of the pyramids, and the founding of the first cities.

Let's begin with an overview of human evolution, tracing our journey from Australopithecus to modern man by following technological advances and population movements that led up to the Neolithic period.

A Chronology of Human History

c. 3,000,000 BC - Appearance of Australopithecus in Africa.
c. 2,000,000 BC - Hominins begin to leave Africa.
c. 1,600,000 BC - Hominins reach southern Europe and Asia.
c. 1,000,000 BC - First evidence of domestic cooking with fire (charred bones and plant remains in Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa).
c. 400,000 BC - Neanderthals inhabit Europe and Asia.
c. 300,000 BC - Appearance of Homo sapiens in Africa.
c. 80,000 BC - Homo sapiens begins migrating out of Africa to all parts of the world.
c. 73,000 BC - Oldest known symbolic art found in Blombos Caves, South Africa.
c. 50,000 BC - Homo sapiens reach Europe.
c. 30,000 BC - Cave paintings in Chauvet Cave in France.
c. 15,000 BC - Lascaux cave paintings in France and Australian rock art.
c. 9000 BC - Domestication of barley in the Fertile Crescent.
c. 9000 BC - Corn cultivation in Mexico.
c. 8000 BC - Domestication of goats and sheep in the Fertile Crescent.
c. 7250 BC - Ain Ghazal (Jordan) becomes a village of a few hundred inhabitants.
c. 7000 BC - Çatalhöyük (Turkey) has a population up to 8,000.
c. 6500 BC - Sedentary life begins in Greece.
c. 6000 BC - Beginning of river irrigation in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
c. 5000 BC - Appearance of the "three sisters" agricultural combination (corn, squash, beans).
c. 4000 BC - Domestication of the camel in Central Asia. (The camelid family originated in North America during the Eocene 45 million years ago. These camels would then have migrated to Asia via a thin strip of land that linked the two continents at that time in the Bering Strait. Another part of the family would have headed for South America, where its descendants still live today: llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas).
c. 3500–3000 BC - The Botai people begin to domesticate horses.
Around the beginning of the Bronze Age - The Sumerians invent the wheel and sailboat, and develop arithmetic, astronomy, and the first form of writing.
c. 2800 BC - Uruk reaches a peak population of up to 80,000.
2600–2200 BC - First signs of urban development in the Greek world; expansion of Mediterranean crops (wheat, vines, olives).
2560 BC - Construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
c. 1500 BC - Minoan civilization flourishes.
c. 1300 BC - Mycenaean civilization flourishes.
c. 1250–1150 BC - Collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations.
1st century AD - North African Berbers domesticate the camel.

This historical overview provides context for the emergence of key technologies, animal domestication, and cultures, setting the stage for our discussion on writing and money.