5 ms·

The Kingdom of Lydia minted gold, silver coins (2022)

28 points by Bluestein 2y ago

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
The Lydian coinage was made of electrum - an alloy of gold and silver. The headline suggests they made both gold and silver coins, which they didn't.
- suzakus 2y ago
  Kroisos made the first gold and silver coins, who was from Lydia. There's a common misbelief that Lydia made the first coins which is simply false, even ignoring the east asian coinage there's earlier electrum pieces (with no design or simple geometric design as one would perhaps expect in a transition from simple bullion)
  - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    I wasn't aware of that, but still the linked article is only depicting and talking about the earlier electrum coinage, while saying "gold, silver" in the headline. Not sure why this is on HN anyway ... a useless article with minimal information, and not news in any shape or form!
    - suzakus 2y ago
      The article is terrible agreed. It actually happens to have a picture of the gold type (with the footer "Lycia coin - social media"). The pictures below that are electrum, however.
throw0101c 2y ago
If anyone wants a decent history of gold-as-currency, Peter Bernstein's The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession is pretty good (second edition has a preface by Volker): > Incorporating myth, history and contemporary investigation, Bernstein tells the story of how human beings have become intoxicated, obsessed, enriched, impoverished, humbled and proud for the sake of gold. From the past to the future, Bernstein's portrayal of gold is intimately linked to the character of humankind. * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/249245 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/249245 People may be more familiar with his book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Bernstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Bernstein
westcort 2y ago
One of the interesting things I learned from RegEx searching all books published prior to 1918 was that the earliest minted coins were minted in Lydia. Another interesting finding was the story of flexible glass. Though almost certainly a fabrication, it is nonetheless instructive of the nature of value (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass).
throw0101c 2y ago
For a good book on ancient economy, I found The Open Sea: The Economic Life of the Ancient Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome by J.G. Manning an interesting read: > In The Open Sea , J. G. Manning offers a major new history of economic life in the Mediterranean world in the Iron Age, from Phoenician trading down to the Hellenistic era and the beginning of Rome's imperial supremacy. Drawing on a wide range of ancient sources and the latest social theory, Manning suggests that a search for an illusory single "ancient economy" has obscured the diversity of lived experience in the Mediterranean world, including both changes in political economies over time and differences in cultural conceptions of property and money. At the same time, he shows how the region's economies became increasingly interconnected during this period. > The Open Sea argues that the keys to understanding the region's rapid social and economic change during the Iron Age are the variety of economic and political solutions its different cultures devised, the patterns of cross-cultural exchange, and the sharp environmental contrasts between Egypt, the Near East, and Greece and Rome. The book examines long-run drivers of change, such as climate, together with the most important economic institutions of the premodern Mediterranean--coinage, money, agriculture, and private property. It also explores the role of economic growth, states, and legal institutions in the region's various economies. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36854772-the-open-sea https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36854772-the-open-sea * https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691151748/the-open-sea https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691151748/th... Leans slightly academic, but still very accessible to a layman. Also the more academic Ancient Greek Law in the 21st Century edited by Paula Jean Perlman: > The ancient Greeks invented written law. Yet, in contrast to later societies in which law became a professional discipline, the Greeks treated laws as components of social and political history, reflecting the daily realities of managing society. To understand Greek law, then, requires looking into extant legal, forensic, and historical texts for evidence of the law in action. From such study has arisen the field of ancient Greek law as a scholarly discipline within classical studies, a field that has come into its own since the 1970s. This edited volume charts new directions for the study of Greek law in the twenty-first century through contributions from eleven leading scholars. The essays in the book’s first section reassess some of the central debates in the field by looking at questions about the role of law in society, the notion of “contracts,” feuding and revenge in the court system, and legal protections for slaves engaged in commerce. The second section breaks new ground by redefining substantive areas of law such as administrative law and sacred law, as well as by examining sources such as Hellenistic inscriptions that have been comparatively neglected in recent scholarship. The third section evaluates the potential of methodological approaches to the study of Greek law, including comparative studies with other cultures and with modern legal theory. The volume ends with an essay that explores pedagogy and the relevance of teaching Greek law in the twenty-first century. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36708211-ancient-greek-law-in-the-21st-century https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36708211-ancient-greek-l... Did you know that one of the largest banks in Ancient Athens was owned/run by two slaves? It seems that making money from finance was 'undignified'—proper citizens and aristocrats focused on argriculture—and so was left to undignified people.
Geee 2y ago
The innovation of coinage is to standardize the unit mass and value, i.e. to create easily usable units. The specific image on the coin authenticates the mass and value given to the unit. This is an UX improvement over using different shapes (jewelry or other non-standard gold pieces) as money, which need to be weighed every time you trade. Gold was used as money before coinage.
baseline-shift 2y ago
600 BC is hardly 'before (sic) prehistoric times'
sparrish 2y ago
600BC... wow. Beautiful coins and still hold worth today. And the first geeky numismatist showed up in 599BC looking for one in mint condition, uncirculated, of course.
diggan 2y ago
What a coinkidink, I just finished watching episode 2 of "Connections" with James Burke which mentions this in the beginning of the episode, when talking about the invention of currency. The article from Egypt Today doesn't seem to mention the discovery of touchstone (which the episode does), which seemed like an important detail of "why gold?". Seems it's available on the Internet Archive too: https://archive.org/details/james-burke-connections_s01e02 https://archive.org/details/james-burke-connections_s01e02
- pjmorris 2y ago
  I had the same question about touchstone from the same episode. I am becoming a Burke-ite after digging up the mention of 'The Trigger Effect' episode of the 70's 'Connections' from an HN Crowdstrike thread and am now binge-watching the entire first series. Amazing stuff. I'd recently read 'The Ascent of Money', Ferguson, and was thinking there's more to be understood than what I found there. I've got 'Debt: The First 5000 Years', Graeber, in my queue, but am looking for other resources. Any ideas?
- ynac 2y ago
  "The Day the Universe Changed" is another James Burke contribution to both story telling and historical relationships almost never told elsewhere.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Well, here's to the "Burkites" then, whole reason for the post :) (Was also watching ...)
- nickbauman 2y ago
  Thanks for posting! Burke uses the term "barter", which is wrong. Before coinage, people used credit. Barter was extremely rare.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    What do you mean? The credit is settled either in barter or coinage, isn't it?
kragen 2y ago
of course this wasn't the first currency; currencies had been in use for millennia at that point. it was the first coinage of the metals they were already using as currencies
- dang 2y ago
  Ok, we've s/currency/coinage/'d the title above. Thanks! Edit: oops, from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41020808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41020808 I think maybe we'd better just excise that whole bit.
  - kragen 2y ago
    coldtea there is generally considered to be incorrect; as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin#Lydian_and_Ionian_electrum_coins_(c._600_BC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin#Lydian_and_Ionian_electru... says, 'The earliest coins are mostly associated with Iron Age Anatolia of the late 7th century BC, and especially with the kingdom of Lydia,' which is what this article is about there's the very curious fact that somehow china had exactly the same innovation within a few decades, so it's possible they were actually first
- nickbauman 2y ago
  Coins (specie that had a direct connection to a ruler, usually with the name or visage of the ruler struck on them) were invented to facilitate war. They were given to soldiers to allow them to participate in the economy of the conquered. Since the free peasantry wouldn't trade with them (unreliable: they "died for a living"). The ruler demanded to be paid taxes in his own coin. This solved several important problems: reduction of military unrest against the ruler, free peasantry became a reliable source of goods and services, and the ruler could make war as needed. A market economy emerged as a side effect.
  - suzakus 2y ago
    Rulers being on coinage was a later invention. The earliest coins used symbols for the issuing authority, for example the famous Athens owl tetradrachm. A lot of the remainder of your comment about soldiers and being invented for war is rather speculative and needs sources.
coldtea 2y ago
>The oldest coins on the planet are believed to date to approximately the second half of the seventh century BC during the reign of King Alyattes who was in power in Lydia from 619 to 560 BC. This was nowhere near the first currency. Not even the first coins...
inawarminister 2y ago
There's also cowry-as-coinage, which seems to be very old and very distributed (Africans, Arabs, Indians, Southeast Asians, and East Asians were still using cowry for international trade to the dawn of the Industrial Age) Indeed, the Chinese kanji for money stems from Cowry. 貝 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money [1] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%B2%9D https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%B2%9D Incidentally, as an Indonesian, I just recognized the shells we children used to play was exactly this species! Ancient currency, of which millions from thousands of disparate culture used to toil and fight for, used for children game tokens... Haha.
- throw0101c 2y ago
  See also the use of giant rocks as currency: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones Generally anything can be used as money if people agree to it. There is nothing inherent in in gold/silver/shells/whatever that make them "money".
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
brudgers 2y ago
[Tangentially related] Debt, the first 5000 years: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DCZIINXhGDcs&ved=2ahUKEwi3-KvhgbuHAxUpETQIHfQcAJ8QtwJ6BAgNEAI&usg=AOvVaw1u_NFIwAad0BY1fff7LXlH https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Great book.-

28 points by Bluestein 2y ago

The Lydian coinage was made of electrum - an alloy of gold and silver. The headline suggests they made both gold and silver coins, which they didn't.

suzakus 2y ago
Kroisos made the first gold and silver coins, who was from Lydia. There's a common misbelief that Lydia made the first coins which is simply false, even ignoring the east asian coinage there's earlier electrum pieces (with no design or simple geometric design as one would perhaps expect in a transition from simple bullion)
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  I wasn't aware of that, but still the linked article is only depicting and talking about the earlier electrum coinage, while saying "gold, silver" in the headline. Not sure why this is on HN anyway ... a useless article with minimal information, and not news in any shape or form!
  - suzakus 2y ago
    The article is terrible agreed. It actually happens to have a picture of the gold type (with the footer "Lycia coin - social media"). The pictures below that are electrum, however.

throw0101c 2y ago

If anyone wants a decent history of gold-as-currency, Peter Bernstein's The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession is pretty good (second edition has a preface by Volker): > Incorporating myth, history and contemporary investigation, Bernstein tells the story of how human beings have become intoxicated, obsessed, enriched, impoverished, humbled and proud for the sake of gold. From the past to the future, Bernstein's portrayal of gold is intimately linked to the character of humankind. * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/249245 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/249245 People may be more familiar with his book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Bernstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Bernstein

westcort 2y ago

One of the interesting things I learned from RegEx searching all books published prior to 1918 was that the earliest minted coins were minted in Lydia. Another interesting finding was the story of flexible glass. Though almost certainly a fabrication, it is nonetheless instructive of the nature of value (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass).

throw0101c 2y ago

For a good book on ancient economy, I found The Open Sea: The Economic Life of the Ancient Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome by J.G. Manning an interesting read: > In The Open Sea , J. G. Manning offers a major new history of economic life in the Mediterranean world in the Iron Age, from Phoenician trading down to the Hellenistic era and the beginning of Rome's imperial supremacy. Drawing on a wide range of ancient sources and the latest social theory, Manning suggests that a search for an illusory single "ancient economy" has obscured the diversity of lived experience in the Mediterranean world, including both changes in political economies over time and differences in cultural conceptions of property and money. At the same time, he shows how the region's economies became increasingly interconnected during this period. > The Open Sea argues that the keys to understanding the region's rapid social and economic change during the Iron Age are the variety of economic and political solutions its different cultures devised, the patterns of cross-cultural exchange, and the sharp environmental contrasts between Egypt, the Near East, and Greece and Rome. The book examines long-run drivers of change, such as climate, together with the most important economic institutions of the premodern Mediterranean--coinage, money, agriculture, and private property. It also explores the role of economic growth, states, and legal institutions in the region's various economies. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36854772-the-open-sea https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36854772-the-open-sea * https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691151748/the-open-sea https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691151748/th... Leans slightly academic, but still very accessible to a layman. Also the more academic Ancient Greek Law in the 21st Century edited by Paula Jean Perlman: > The ancient Greeks invented written law. Yet, in contrast to later societies in which law became a professional discipline, the Greeks treated laws as components of social and political history, reflecting the daily realities of managing society. To understand Greek law, then, requires looking into extant legal, forensic, and historical texts for evidence of the law in action. From such study has arisen the field of ancient Greek law as a scholarly discipline within classical studies, a field that has come into its own since the 1970s. This edited volume charts new directions for the study of Greek law in the twenty-first century through contributions from eleven leading scholars. The essays in the book’s first section reassess some of the central debates in the field by looking at questions about the role of law in society, the notion of “contracts,” feuding and revenge in the court system, and legal protections for slaves engaged in commerce. The second section breaks new ground by redefining substantive areas of law such as administrative law and sacred law, as well as by examining sources such as Hellenistic inscriptions that have been comparatively neglected in recent scholarship. The third section evaluates the potential of methodological approaches to the study of Greek law, including comparative studies with other cultures and with modern legal theory. The volume ends with an essay that explores pedagogy and the relevance of teaching Greek law in the twenty-first century. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36708211-ancient-greek-law-in-the-21st-century https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36708211-ancient-greek-l... Did you know that one of the largest banks in Ancient Athens was owned/run by two slaves? It seems that making money from finance was 'undignified'—proper citizens and aristocrats focused on argriculture—and so was left to undignified people.

Geee 2y ago

The innovation of coinage is to standardize the unit mass and value, i.e. to create easily usable units. The specific image on the coin authenticates the mass and value given to the unit. This is an UX improvement over using different shapes (jewelry or other non-standard gold pieces) as money, which need to be weighed every time you trade. Gold was used as money before coinage.

baseline-shift 2y ago

600 BC is hardly 'before (sic) prehistoric times'

sparrish 2y ago

600BC... wow. Beautiful coins and still hold worth today. And the first geeky numismatist showed up in 599BC looking for one in mint condition, uncirculated, of course.

diggan 2y ago

What a coinkidink, I just finished watching episode 2 of "Connections" with James Burke which mentions this in the beginning of the episode, when talking about the invention of currency. The article from Egypt Today doesn't seem to mention the discovery of touchstone (which the episode does), which seemed like an important detail of "why gold?". Seems it's available on the Internet Archive too: https://archive.org/details/james-burke-connections_s01e02 https://archive.org/details/james-burke-connections_s01e02

pjmorris 2y ago
I had the same question about touchstone from the same episode. I am becoming a Burke-ite after digging up the mention of 'The Trigger Effect' episode of the 70's 'Connections' from an HN Crowdstrike thread and am now binge-watching the entire first series. Amazing stuff. I'd recently read 'The Ascent of Money', Ferguson, and was thinking there's more to be understood than what I found there. I've got 'Debt: The First 5000 Years', Graeber, in my queue, but am looking for other resources. Any ideas?
ynac 2y ago
"The Day the Universe Changed" is another James Burke contribution to both story telling and historical relationships almost never told elsewhere.
Bluestein 2y ago
Well, here's to the "Burkites" then, whole reason for the post :) (Was also watching ...)
nickbauman 2y ago
Thanks for posting! Burke uses the term "barter", which is wrong. Before coinage, people used credit. Barter was extremely rare.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  What do you mean? The credit is settled either in barter or coinage, isn't it?

kragen 2y ago

of course this wasn't the first currency; currencies had been in use for millennia at that point. it was the first coinage of the metals they were already using as currencies

dang 2y ago
Ok, we've s/currency/coinage/'d the title above. Thanks! Edit: oops, from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41020808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41020808 I think maybe we'd better just excise that whole bit.
- kragen 2y ago
  coldtea there is generally considered to be incorrect; as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin#Lydian_and_Ionian_electrum_coins_(c._600_BC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin#Lydian_and_Ionian_electru... says, 'The earliest coins are mostly associated with Iron Age Anatolia of the late 7th century BC, and especially with the kingdom of Lydia,' which is what this article is about there's the very curious fact that somehow china had exactly the same innovation within a few decades, so it's possible they were actually first
nickbauman 2y ago
Coins (specie that had a direct connection to a ruler, usually with the name or visage of the ruler struck on them) were invented to facilitate war. They were given to soldiers to allow them to participate in the economy of the conquered. Since the free peasantry wouldn't trade with them (unreliable: they "died for a living"). The ruler demanded to be paid taxes in his own coin. This solved several important problems: reduction of military unrest against the ruler, free peasantry became a reliable source of goods and services, and the ruler could make war as needed. A market economy emerged as a side effect.
- suzakus 2y ago
  Rulers being on coinage was a later invention. The earliest coins used symbols for the issuing authority, for example the famous Athens owl tetradrachm. A lot of the remainder of your comment about soldiers and being invented for war is rather speculative and needs sources.

coldtea 2y ago

>The oldest coins on the planet are believed to date to approximately the second half of the seventh century BC during the reign of King Alyattes who was in power in Lydia from 619 to 560 BC. This was nowhere near the first currency. Not even the first coins...

inawarminister 2y ago

There's also cowry-as-coinage, which seems to be very old and very distributed (Africans, Arabs, Indians, Southeast Asians, and East Asians were still using cowry for international trade to the dawn of the Industrial Age) Indeed, the Chinese kanji for money stems from Cowry. 貝 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money [1] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%B2%9D https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%B2%9D Incidentally, as an Indonesian, I just recognized the shells we children used to play was exactly this species! Ancient currency, of which millions from thousands of disparate culture used to toil and fight for, used for children game tokens... Haha.

throw0101c 2y ago
See also the use of giant rocks as currency: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones Generally anything can be used as money if people agree to it. There is nothing inherent in in gold/silver/shells/whatever that make them "money".

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

brudgers 2y ago

[Tangentially related] Debt, the first 5000 years: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DCZIINXhGDcs&ved=2ahUKEwi3-KvhgbuHAxUpETQIHfQcAJ8QtwJ6BAgNEAI&usg=AOvVaw1u_NFIwAad0BY1fff7LXlH https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...

Bluestein 2y ago
Great book.-