The ancient Europeans used "bronze" as a substitute for money
Researchers examined 5,028 bronze items from more than 100 ancient treasures cabinets dating back to the "Early Bronze Age."
In the early Bronze Age, ancient Europeans standardized the shape and weight of bronze objects. To be used as one of the early forms of coinage.
According to a study conducted by a research team from "Leiden" University in the Netherlands and published by the journal "PLOS ONE", the ancient Europeans went to use various bronze coins as a financial standard to estimate the value of goods and goods.
The researchers explained that "money is an important feature of modern human society, as people depend on financial currencies in the buying and selling processes, but it may be difficult to determine this in the archaeological record, because the ancients had imprecise forms for measuring and determining the financial standards of currencies, compared to today."
Michael Kuijpers, an assistant professor at the University of Leiden's School of Archeology and the principal investigator of the study, says: In this paper, we worked to study the way humans used to assess the value of things, and we decided to focus on weight because we believed that weight was a critical factor in knowing whether the two things were. Similar or not, which is essential for any emerging currency to develop.
Researchers examined 5,028 pieces of bronze objects that they obtained from more than 100 ancient treasures from regions in Central Europe, such as the Danube region, "Lower Austria", a state located in northeastern Austria, and parts of the Czech Republic.
The pieces under study were made of bronze with shapes described as bronze rings, ribs, and axes. The researchers statistically compared the weights of the pieces using the principle of psychology known as the "Weber Fragment", which is a principle based on the idea of a person manually weighing objects to estimate how similar they are in terms of mass, according to the study.
Kuijpers adds: Our analysis showed that a large proportion of bronze rings, ribs, and axes have weights that make it difficult to distinguish each other from each other in the early Bronze Age, and even if this is not a confirmation of the use of bronze coins as currency, it does confirm that bronze pieces and objects were a standard tool. Important for the ancient Europeans.
The study explains that "although the weights of the objects varied, about 70% of the rings studied were similar enough that they could not be distinguished manually (with an average of 195 grams), and the bronze objects were similar in weight."
The researchers see this consistent similarity in shape and weight as evidence of its use as an early form of the common currency.
Kuijpers says: The euro was in prehistoric times in the form of bronze rings, ribs, and axes. These artifacts were standardized in the early Bronze Age in terms of shape and weight, and were used as an early form of money.
It is noteworthy that the production of bronze in Europe appeared before about 2300 BC, and the Bronze Age is known as "the era of the emergence of the science of alloys, and humans resorted to using bronze in the manufacture of tools and hoes and household tools such as knives, because it is sharper compared to copper."