Editing Commodity money (section)

== Functions ==
[[File:Axes-like grzywnas (commodity money) from Kostkowice, Poland, 9-mid X Century AD.jpg|thumb|Axe-like [[Grzywna (unit)|grzywnas]] (commodity money) from Kostkowice, Poland, 9th to mid-10th century AD]]

Although grains such as [[barley]] have been used historically in relations of trade and barter ([[Mesopotamia]] circa 3000 BC), they can be inconvenient as a [[medium of exchange]] or a [[standard of deferred payment]] due to transport and storage concerns and eventual [[Food spoilage|spoilage]]. Gold or other metals are sometimes used in a [[price system]] as a durable, easily warehoused store of value.

The use of [[barter]]-like methods using commodity money may date back to at least 100,000 years ago.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}} Trading in [[red ochre]] is attested in [[Eswatini]], shell jewellery in the form of strung beads also dates back to this period, and had the basic attributes needed of commodity money.{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}} To organize production and to distribute goods and services among their populations, before [[market economies]] existed, people relied on tradition, top-down command, or community cooperation. Relations of [[reciprocity (cultural anthropology)|reciprocity]], and/or redistribution, substituted for market exchange.{{Citation needed|date=August 2008}}

The [[city-state]]s of [[Sumer]] developed a trade and [[market economy]] based originally on the commodity money of the [[Shekel]], which was a certain weight measure of barley, while the [[Babylonia]]ns and their city-state neighbors later developed the earliest system of [[economics]] using a metric of various commodities, that was fixed in a [[Code of law|legal code]].<ref name="yale2">{{Cite web
| url         = http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hammint.asp
| title       = The Code of Hammurabi : Introduction
| access-date = December 8, 2015
| publisher   = Yale University
| year        = 1915
| author      = Charles F. Horne, PhD
}}</ref>

Several centuries after the invention of [[cuneiform script]], the use of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to codified amounts of commodity money being used in [[Contract Law|contract law]], such as buying property and paying legal [[Fine (penalty)|fines]].<ref name="Sheila">{{cite journal
| last1   = Dow
| first1  = Sheila C.
| year    = 2005
| title   = Axioms and Babylonian thought: a reply
| journal = Journal of Post Keynesian Economics
| volume  = 27
| issue   = 3
| pages   = 385–91
| doi = 10.1080/01603477.2005.11051453
| s2cid = 153637070
}}</ref>