A brief history of Chinese

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A brief history of Chinese coins

• Noah Gentry-George

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Historical overview

• Coinage and currency, like many other aspects of
  Chinese civilization, boasts a long and rich
  history.
• The history of coinage as a means of payment for
  goods and services in China can generally be
  explained in five major evolutions.

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What makes a coin a coin?

• Three basic criteria
• the coin must have the mark of the issuing
  authority.
• the coin must contain an intrinsic value bearing
  some relationship to the circulating value.
• the coin must be issued to a denomination and
  weight standard.

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General goal of research

• Due to the problem with making generalized
  statements about difficult to verify topics, such
  as ancient societies and objects, the following
  work should generally be looked at as a broad
  attempt to gain a better understanding of the
  evolutionary history of generic money items in
  ancient China.

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The five stages of Chinese coins

• FYI China was not unified until 221 B.C.
• Before that time, China was made up of loosely
  aligned groups of sister states.
• Due to this fact, it is believed that different
  styles of coins were in circulation at the same
  time in different areas of China.

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The first Chinese coin

• As far as historical evidence can prove, outside
  of random objects of barter, the earliest object
  used in China as a definite and widely accepted
  means of exchange was the cowry shell .

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The Cowry Shell

• Used by the Shang Dynasty (1766-1122 B.C.)
• Due to the fact that the cowry was not native to
  Chinese waters, it made for a serviceable object
  of exchange because it was impossible to
  counterfeit.

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The cowry Shell
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Ant and nose coins.

• This odd moniker is derived from the unusual
  shape of the coin and a particular insignia that
  all of these specimens bore.
• Ant and nose coins carry the mark of their
  issuing authority

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Ant and nose coins
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Spade and Sword coins

• After the bronze cowry coins, came a
  classification of early money commonly known as
  spade or sword coins.

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Some scholars believe.

• that the knife coin and the spade coin are not
  evolutionary, but rather contemporaneous money
  items.
• There seems to be a period in the 5th Century
  B.C. where the two types overlap in their
  minting.

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Spade and Sword coins
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The spade coin

• Spade coins were at the zenith of their
  circulation between 425 B.C. and 344 B.C
• Many scholars believe that the spade coin is
  the first true Chinese coin.
• An interesting aspect of the spade coin is that
  each city-state seems to have minted their own
  supply.

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Spade coins

• Along with the seemingly wide spread use of the
  spade coin, there also seems to have developed a
  very sophisticated system of calculating weight
  and its corresponding value in the coins.

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The final evolution.

• The round coin
• Fully implemented by the Han dynasty
• Early round coins seem to fall into two
  categories. Coins with round holes in the middle,
  and coins with square holes in the middle.

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round coins