> It's not clear that commodity money or coinage existed before paper notes. Coins were around for millenia before paper money. The earliest paper money I know

> It's not clear that commodity money or coinage existed before paper notes. Coins were around for millenia before paper money. The earliest paper money I know of is the bark money written of by Marco Polo [1]. Europeans got their idea for paper money from the Chinese. [1] http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/marco-polo-on-money http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/marco-polo-on-money