Several thousand years ago when our ancestors - the nomads and the hunter-gatherers decided to settle in one place, communities were formed. For communities to flourish addressing and sufficing a mutual dependency became a natural response. This led to the idea of exchange - an exchanging of goods for goods, and that gave birth to the bartering system.
Suppose one family cultivated a particular type of grain and another family did another one. Then to fulfil the needs of each other they mutually exchanged the goods. Initially, there was no consideration of quantity, time, effort or availability of the product to be exchanged. This was a rudimentary form of bartering. Later, to protect the sentiments, relationships and interests, and to avoid conflicts and disputes the concept of value was evolved. During this time a unit of measure too was refined and standardised within that tribe.
...to protect the sentiments, relationships and interests, and to avoid conflicts and disputes the concept of value was evolved.
It must have taken several hundred years from there to establish and to vest a certain value into objects such as certain type of stones and metals. These were the primitive form of money that evolved. From there on, we have taken a long journey in shaping and defining money. We've greatly evolved through time. And, through history money has become perhaps the only inanimate concept formalised and translated into a physical object which we all believe in.
Today, this physical object is so much a reality to us that people fight over it, countries wage wars to protect it.
Today, this physical object is so much a reality to us that people fight over it, countries wage wars to protect it. But unlike other inanimate concepts that we have evolved along the way can be termed as a myth, money remains real.
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