In the earliest ages of which history professes to take cognizance, persons who wished to dispose of their goods were obliged to have recourse to barter.

By and by shells were adopted as a medium of exchange, and then pieces of stamped silk, linen, and deerskin.

These were followed by circular discs of copper, pierced with a round hole, the forerunners of the ordinary copper coins of a century or two later, which had square holes, and bore inscriptions, as they still do in the present day.

Money was also cast in the shape of "knives" and of "trouser," by which names specimens of this early coinage (mostly fakes) are known to connoisseurs.

Some of these were beautifully finished, and even inlaid with gold.