Changes

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.<ref>For more information on the use of coins and monetization in the ancient world, see: Schaps, David M. 2015. The Invention of Coinage and the Monetization of Ancient Greece.</ref>