Bill Maurer, an anthropologist and the dean at the University of California, Irvine’s School of Social Sciences, said many cultures previously used offerings such as food, special stones, carved artifacts and herbs. But with the invention of coinage in what is now modern-day Turkey between 500 BCE and 600 BCE, people largely switched to money. … “It’s not so much about the payment, but how the coin itself has a quasi-magical property people think comes with it,” he said. “It has a connection of sovereignty and represents a token of authority.”

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