The original euro: Lumps of bronze were currency 2800 years ago

摘要

THE first pan-European currency may have existed more than 2800 years ago in the Bronze Age. There were no coins yet and no central bank, but people across Europe used fragments of bronze, the majority of which were of a standard mass or a multiple of that. "You can actually think of some monetary union in Europe without public institutions," says Nicola Ialongo at the University of Goettingen in Germany. Bronze is an alloy of copper and other metals, usually tin, that was used widely in Europe from about 2300 to 800 BC, hence the term Bronze Age. This widespread access to those metals must have involved trade. For one thing, "copper is not very common", says Ialongo. It was mined at several sites, including in the Eastern Alps. A new study shows that it was also being smelted in what is now eastern Serbia between 2000 and 1500 BC, more than 500 years earlier than thought (Journal of Archaeological Science, doi.org/gjrzgn).