What was the Chinese currency?
Just some of the different coins in ancient china
At first money was made of shells, the shells were easy to carry around and count, they were also very durable. The unit of shells is peng which means friend, 10 shells make a peng. Shells eventually became hard to access so they made shell shaped money out of pottery, stone, bone, jade, bronze and gold.Shell money then influenced the creation of metal coins made out of copper, iron, lead, gold and silver. Spade and knife shaped coins became popular but Shell money still existed. As time went on different coins were made such as the Hoe coin, Ban Liang, Kaiyuan Tongbao and Strings of cash. The coins had a hole in the middle which were tied to a piece of string, each string had 1,000 coins. The values of each coin was different making it quite difficult to see what coins were what which was one of the main reasons for paper money.
Questions
What does peng mean?
How many shells were on a piece of string?