The Swedish pop group ABBA once sang: “Money, money, money”! They were, no doubt, singing about today’s Crossword.
Click start to play and guess all the different currencies.
Before the invention of money, people would make, grow, or do things for one another. But as civilisations grew and expanded, it became harder to keep a tally of how much people owed each other.
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, bartering became inconvenient when it involved large or heavy items, like sacks of barley. People started to realise that smaller items of value made more sense, in terms of trade.
The history of using money goes back 40,000 years. Its form has evolved over millennia, from natural objects to paper, plastic and cryptocurrency. In China, 3,000 years ago, shells were commonly used as currency. Other rare objects found in Nature emerged as units of value for exchange, such as mother-of-pearl shells in the Americas and cowry shells in Africa, Europe, and Asia.
And of course, precious metals and stones like gold, silver, copper, amber and obsidian were always accepted in an exchange of goods.
The first known form of currency is the Mesopotamian shekel, which was used approximately 5,000 years ago. The first facility to manufacture coins as a form of currency opened in Lydia – modern-day Turkey – in approximately 600BC. And the Chinese, the creators of paper, were the first to devise a system of paper money in 770BC.
How well do you know the currencies of the world? Test your knowledge in today’s Crossword. Let us know if you enjoyed today’s puzzle at games@gulfnews.com.
