If you'll accept a Wikipedia link, this gives a basic overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money#Prehistory:_predecessors_of_money_and_its_emergen

If you'll accept a Wikipedia link, this gives a basic overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money#Prehistory:_predecessors_of_money_and_its_emergence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money#Prehistory:_p... In short, while bartering likely did exist in some forms, it was not the primary means of commerce. Within a tribe or group of people, a 'gift economy' was generally used. This makes sense, as an average pre-historic tribe had like 50 people, making a complicated economic system unnecessary. When civilization started to form, primitive forms of money came along with it. There was never a time when you went to the market with a handful of wheat and some furs, and hoped to trade them for some salt and fruit. That idea was popularized by Adam Smith in the 1700s, who was an economist, not an anthropologist.