Editing Currency (section)

===Early currency===
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[[File: A print from 1845 shows cowry shells being used as money by an Arab trader.jpg|thumb|Cowry shells being used as money by an Arab trader]]
Originally, currency was a form of receipt, representing grain stored in temple granaries in [[Sumer]] in ancient [[Mesopotamia]] and in [[Ancient Egypt]].

In this first stage of currency, metals were used as symbols to represent value stored in the form of commodities. This formed the basis of trade in the [[Fertile Crescent]] for over 1500 years. However, the [[Bronze Age collapse|collapse of the Near Eastern trading system]] pointed to a flaw: in an era where there was no place that was safe to store value, the value of a circulating medium could only be as sound as the forces that defended that store. A trade could only reach as far as the credibility of that military. By the late [[Bronze Age]], however, a series of [[Treaty|treaties]] had established safe passage for merchants around the [[Eastern Mediterranean]], spreading from [[Minoan civilization|Minoan]] [[Crete]] and [[Mycenae]] in the northwest to [[Elam]] and [[Bahrain]] in the southeast. It is not known what was used as a currency for these exchanges, but it is thought that [[oxhide ingot|oxhide-shaped ingots]] of copper, produced in [[Cyprus]], may have functioned as a currency.

It is thought that the increase in piracy and raiding associated with the [[Bronze Age collapse]], possibly produced by the [[Peoples of the Sea]], brought the trading system of oxhide ingots to an end. It was only the recovery of Phoenician trade in the 10th and 9th centuries BC that led to a return to prosperity, and the appearance of real coinage, possibly first in Anatolia with [[Croesus]] of [[Lydia]] and subsequently with the Greeks and Persians. In Africa, many forms of value store have been used, including beads, ingots, [[ivory]], various forms of weapons, livestock, the [[manilla currency]], [[shell money]], and ochre and other earth oxides. The manilla rings of [[West Africa]] were one of the currencies used from the 15th century onwards to sell slaves. [[African currency]] is still notable for its variety, and in many places, various forms of [[barter]] still apply.