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Shell money is a medium of exchange similar to coin money and other forms of commodity money, and was once commonly used in many parts of the world. [1] Shell money usually consisted of whole or partial sea shells , often worked into beads or otherwise shaped.
1742 drawing of shells of the money cowrie, Monetaria moneta Cowrie shells The shells of cowries are usually smooth and shiny and more or less egg-shaped. The round side of the shell is called the Dorsal Face, whereas the flat under side is called the Ventral Face, which shows a long, narrow, slit-like opening (), which is often toothed at the edges.
Monetaria moneta, common name the money cowrie, is a species of small sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Cypraeidae, the cowries. [1]This species is called "money cowrie" because the shells were historically widely used in many Pacific and Indian Ocean countries as shell money before coinage was in common usage.
The Spondylus shell was used as neolithic jewelry and also as an early form of currency. The interior of two fossil valves of Spondylus from the Pliocene of Cyprus. There is global evidence of the importance of the spondylus shell. Archaeological evidence [2] shows that people in Europe were trading the shells as jewelry as long as 5,000 years ago.
Commodity money is to be distinguished from representative money, which is a certificate or token which can be exchanged for the underlying commodity, but only by a formal process. A key feature of commodity money is that the value is directly perceived by its users, who recognize the utility or beauty of the tokens as goods in themselves.
The alternative to a commodity money system is fiat money which is defined by a central bank and government law as legal tender even if it has no intrinsic value. Originally fiat money was paper currency or base metal coinage, but in modern economies it mainly exists as data such as bank balances and records of credit or debit card purchases, [3] and the fraction that exists as notes and coins ...
Societies in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia used shell money—often, the shells of the cowry (Cypraea moneta L. or C. annulus L.). According to Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coins. [15] It is thought by modern scholars that these first stamped coins were minted around 650 to 600 ...
The "seed" method uses grains of ground shell from freshwater mussels, and overharvesting for this purpose has endangered several freshwater mussel species in the southeastern United States. [5] The pearl industry is so important in some areas, significant sums of money are spent on monitoring the health of farmed molluscs. [6]