THE FUTURE OF MONEY

摘要

The next time you pull a tattered $5 bill out of your pocket to pay for a coffee, consider the fact that you're handling one of society's oldest and most important inventions: money. Relatively soon after humans decided that we liked living in groups, instead of in panda-style isolation, we came up with ways to value what we had-and make people pay for it. We bartered cattle and grain until the Lydians-the Bronze Age inhabitants of what is modern-day Turkey-realized those were hard to stuff into a wallet, and introduced government-minted coins. It turned out coins were still a pain to carry around, so eventually they evolved into the paper money we all use today.