Commodity money (barley and silver standards)
Moneda-mercancía: cebada y plata como unidades de valor
- Date
- c. 3400 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Uruk (Warka), Muthanna, Iraq
- Credited to
- Administration of the Uruk temples
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Administrative use of fixed quantities of barley (sila, gur) and, later, of silver by weight (shekel) as a common measure of value, wages and debt in the Uruk records. Not coined money, but it functions as a unit of account and standard of exchange.
The bevelled-rim bowls of Uruk are interpreted as standardised barley rations; cowrie shells and copper axes functioned as commodity money in other regions and periods.
What it led to
- Prices, wages and interest expressed in a common unit: accounting economy
- Debt and debt bondage as institutions
- Standardised weights and measures and the Mesopotamian silver shekel
Built on
Made possible
- Proto-cuneiform writingc. 3300 BCE
- Coinage (Lydian electrum coins)c. 620 BCE
- Silver shekel
- Weights and balance scale
- Single-entry bookkeeping