This is a kind of an economist's version of events. It's not wrong, but it is a narrative so it's useful for thinking about things in ways that economists are i

This is a kind of an economist's version of events. It's not wrong, but it is a narrative so it's useful for thinking about things in ways that economists are interested in, not necessarily every way. Debt as the origin of money kind of dates to the time when economists were thinking about these things more than the time when money was invented. Money was invented lots of times. A common form is when there is a lot of trade and people start trading in particular things specifically for their tradability. Those things are then money. No promises involved. In some cases there is evidence of promises as early money. Cattle or wheat and traded for clay artifacts and traded back at will could. This allowed traders to exchange clay coins instead of actual goods which is ore convenient. But, I think this is an exception. Modern money often evolved from promises to pay bearers gold or other currencies and eventually the promise was removed. Back to the narrative… For my own narrative, I think of money like this. Money is a tool for massive and complex cooperation in large groups, a fundamentally human talent. It's emergent and the behavior that encourages its emergence is massive and complex cooperation in ways that require it, trade basically. If enough trade is happening, I think money emerges in some form and it enables even more trade.