Brother, Can You Spare a Cowry?

Americans like to think of the dollar as king, but in the historical context of currency, that honor probably belongs to the humble cowry. A type of mollusk shell widely available in the shallow waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans, the cowry was used as money as early as 1200 BCE in China, where the first pictograph meaning “money” depicted a shell. The most widely and longest used currency in history, cowries continued to be exchanged in Africa into the mid-20th century.

Our ancestors also used everything from amber to zappozats (decorated axes) as money, including eggs, feathers, ivory, jade, kettles, cattle, pigs, quartz, rice, thimbles and even vodka. The “shekel” was originally a specific weight of barley, much as the British pound represented a pound of silver. Roman soldiers were paid in salt, giving us the word “salary.”