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In early societies people developed barter as a form of proto-money, when they used the things that everyone agreed to accept in trade. Various items have been used by different societies at different times. Thus, for example, Aztecs used cacao beans, Norwegians used butter, the early U.S. colonists used tobacco leaves, and Roman soldiers were paid a salary of salt. On the island of Nauru, the islanders even used rats for this purpose.

The first coins were made in the Kingdom of Lydia, located on the territory of Turkey in the 7th century B.C. The Lydians used weighed lumps of metal and stamped them with pictures to confirm their weight (the shape of the coins was unimportant). The process of stamping was called “minting”. In fact, the stamp on the coin was a seal that identified the person who had guaranteed the weight of that coin.

The well-known dollar sign has various explanations. Perhaps one of the most widely accepted is that it was the result of the evolution of the Mexican or Spanish “Ps” which was used for pesos. This theory explains that the “S” gradually came to be written over the “P”, developing a close equivalent to the American dollar “$” mark. It was widely used even before the adoption of the United States dollar in 1785.

The largest banknote ever issued by the Bank of England was the £1,000,000 note. Designed for use by the UK government only, the notes were canceled after just a few months, allowing very few to escape into private hands. However, just because the notes are out of service nowadays doesn’t mean that they are valueless. In 2008, one of two known surviving notes was sold at auction for almost $120,000.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world’s largest banknote is the 100,000-peso note, which is of the size of a standard sheet of paper. It was created by the government of the Philippines in 1998 to celebrate a century of independence from Spanish rule. The note was offered only to collectors, who could purchase one of the limited-edition notes for 180,000 pesos, or about $3,700.

American Indians used to have strings of clamshells, which they called wampum and used as money. The process to make wampum was very labor intensive, which increased their value among the European traders. However, the Dutch colonists began to manufacture wampum themselves and eventually became the primary source of wampum, thereby destroying the system which had functioned for centuries.

Why are U.S. notes green? No one is really sure. However, in 1929, when the Bureau of Printing and Engraving began making smaller size currency, green continued to be used because its pigment was readily available in large quantities. Green is also relatively high in its resistance to chemical and physical changes, and it has been psychologically identified with the strong and stable credit of the government.