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 cow

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.