Sweet currency, i.e. chocolate, is a legal tender.
Chocolate may not be associated with money, but it turns out that the Maya used it as a means of payment.
Tracing the history of money is not as easy as it may seem. After all, as soon as a more organized social life developed, there was a need for the exchange of goods.
At first it was a so-called barter, i.e. just a one-time exchange of goods for goods, without using a fixed exchanger, for example in the form of cash. Somewhat later, but before money in the form of metal coins prevailed in transactions, certain products, depending on the culture, played the role of a kind of "currency". More in the blog "
Antina Anta - my view"
Various payment methods.
Patricia Churchland in her book "The Morality of the Brain" points out that, most likely, the beginning of the exchange of goods between social groups dates back about 100,000 years. years ago, and Matt Ridley adds that it was a kind of breakthrough in our history. A breakthrough, thanks to which the continuous development of technologies and specialization of works began. According to this hypothesis, the benefits of trade and economic exchange turned out to be invaluable, and with social development, more and more sophisticated forms of trade transactions developed.
The mentioned one-time barter gradually turned into various types of currency systems, which, however, were not limited to immediately known to us money made of precious metal. For example, around 3000 BC in the Middle East, or rather in the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates, there was a currency system based on grain. Workers were paid wages, but tributes were also paid to the authorities and temples. Apparently, this is the source of the name of today's currency of Israel (shekel), more precisely from the word shechel, which the inhabitants of Babylon designated grain. Anyway, before the coin was distributed among the Phoenicians, such contractual means of exchanging value were, for example, animals, metal tools and even chocolate.
