Iron was also the currency of the Spartans, but it has been used as such in much more recent times.

Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations (Book I.ch.4, published in 1776), says, "there is at this day a village in Scotland where it is not uncommon, I am told, for a workman to carry nails, instead of money, to the baker's shop or the alehouse." [12] Primeval Antiquities of Denmark.

London, 1849, p.

140.
[13] See Dr.Pearson's paper in the Philosophical Transactions, 1796, relative to certain ancient arms and utensils found in the river Witham between Kirkstead and Lincoln.
[14] "In the Forest of Dean and thereabouts the iron is made at this day of cinders, being the rough and offal thrown by in the Roman time; they then having only foot-blasts to melt the ironstone; but now, by the force of a great wheel that drives a pair of Bellows twenty feet long, all that iron is extracted out of the cinders which could not be forced from it by the Roman foot-blast.

And in the Forest of Dean and thereabouts, and as high as Worcester, there ave great and infinite quantities of these cinders; some in vast mounts above ground, some under ground, which will supply the iron works some hundreds of years; and these cinders ave they which make the prime and best iron, and with much less charcoal than doth the ironstone."-- A.