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→The Role of Money and Coinage in the Economy
==The Role of Money and Coinage in the Economy==
It was also at around the 6th century BC that coinage began to be used more substantially. The origin of coinage is somewhat in dispute but it could have begun in the Aegean or Western Anatolia, perhaps the kingdom of Lydia. What is critical, however, is not so much the invention of coinage but how it was used by the later empires. By the 5th century BC, coins in the Persian Achaemenid Empire began to be used in a standard form, called the daric (Figure 3), as decreed by Darius I.<ref>For a discussion on Darius and his important reforms, including in currency, see: Poolos, Jamie. 2008. ''Darius the Great.'' Ancient World Leaders. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.</ref> We now begin to see a standard way in which money began to flow across vast distances using a standard unit of currency. As trade began to be more interconnect and long-distance, coins begin to be a new medium in which the financing of that trade was possible. This included investments made to traders who were benefiting from the new international trade links.
[[File:Achaemenid_coin_daric_420BC_front.jpg|thumbnail|Figure 3. Achaemenid coin (Daric 420BC) 420 BC.]]
Coinage, therefore, was a convenient representation of that can be exchanged easily across vast areas under the aegis of a unifying state. This allowed money to flow at much greater quantities in later periods and made banking and investments a fixed feature of the economic landscape. In essence, capital in the form of coinage becomes of great utility with the rise of empires in the Near East, as it was able to flow across distances with far less hindrances from numerous political actors disrupting trade flow, such as that seen in the Bronze Age. This also allowed a range of commodities to be trade in far away regions, including silk from China arriving in the Near East and reaching Rome in the Roman Empire, all the while forms of investment banking beginning to flourish.<ref>For information on the trade in silk and the Silk Road establishment, see: ''The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes The Ancient World Economy and the Empires of Parthia, Central Asia and Han China''. 2015. Pen & Sword.</ref>
