All about money postcard: Money timeline:

You can click at each point to get further information.

Beginning: 9,000 BC - 1,200 BC

In the beginning
Once people began to travel and meet each other (even over short distances) they realized they had things they could swap. One person might live near a herd of wild animals, the other near some berries. One person might have more animal hides than they needed to keep warm in winter, another might be skilled in making spears. Swapping these goods was the obvious answer.

9,000 BC
This is the formal move from bartering to money where it became common for people to use cattle, sheep, and camels. This has continued for a long time with wives, other animals and goods being bought for money. Using cattle you can begin to put a price on goods. 2 goats might be worth one cow. When man began to grow crops these were also used as money - especially as they could be carried around.

3,000 BC
In the Babylonian Empire the temples became places where money (in the form of grain) was stored. This was the beginning of banks. People would store their extra grain in the temple, and the temple priests would keep a record of what they had in their storerooms. In those days you had to give some of your crops to the temple. They would use these stores for themselves and in times of famine.

1,200 BC
This is the earliest record we have of cowrie shells being used as money. This is the most widely used type of money in the world, and has also been used for the longest. It started in China, where cowrie shells were found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. As people began to trade with other countries their use spread. They were still being used in Nigeria, Africa, until World War 2.

1,000 BC
China again leads the way with tools like metal knives and spades were used as money. They also began to make metal copies of the cowrie shells. Both these led to the start of the round coin. Lumps of metal are easier to make than the shape of the shells. From here coins became round, with a hole through the middle so that they could be carried on a string.

500 BC
As people began to travel more widely and meet traders from other countries the idea of money began to spread. The earliest coins have been found in Lydia, now part of Turkey. These were round pieces of silver and gold, which were stamped with the faces of gods and emperors to prove that they were real coins.

The Greeks soon used coins across their empire, quickly followed by the Romans. The Romans used coins made of gold, silver and bronze using the different metals and the size of the coins for different values.

300 BC
The Egyptians were using grain as their main form of money storing this in large granaries - the beginning of banks!

118 BC
China was first to use paper money. This started as the skins of white deer. A 'note' was about 30 square centimetres. As with all money being able to control how much there is around is important. This plays a part in deciding how much the coins/notes are worth. If there are lots of pieces of white deerskin then the money isn't worth too much as it is easy to go out and kill a deer and get some more money. The less there is the more the money is worth. This is why gold and silver were used for coins.

54 BC
We finally find out what is happening in Britain. The first Romans reported back to Rome that sword blades were being used as money. These were prized possessions as it took a long time to make a blade, and the metal was difficult to find.

The Celts were making and using their own coins in some of the tribes. They were using gold, silver, bronze (the most common metals used for making money) and potin. This was a mixture of some of the other metals: copper, zinc, lead and tin.

400 AD
The Roman Empire falls with the invasion by the Visigoths. At this time the Romans had set up a mint in London, although it only lasted for about 40 years. The word mint (and money) may come from the Romans, although there is also a place in Africa called Moneta where there was a mint a very long time ago. The goddess Juno was very important to the Romans and one of her names was Juno Moneta, the goddess of wealth. There was a mint in her temple.

Another Roman story tells of Moneta being the goddess of warning. There are two stories: she warned of the eruption of a volcano or, through a gaggle of geese, she shouted the warning that the Gauls were coming. Either way the word Moneta is where the word money and mint come from.

435 AD The Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain and the use of coins disappeared from the country for over 200 years. Coins were minted in Britain by Bishop Mellitus from 604 - 616, when he issued gold coins, but these seem to have been mainly used as ornaments!

620 AD
About 37 coins from part of France (then called Gaul) were buried in a ship at Sutton Hoo as part of a burial ceremony. The coins are all gold and are called Merovingian as this was the name of the Kings of Gaul at this time. There were no English coins found at this site.

630 AD
Coins are being used again in the south-east of England. The reason for this is trade. Ships from France and Italy were coming to the country with goods, and bringing with them coins. Now coins were here to stay and have been used from then until the present day.

About this time 101 English coins were buried in Crondall, Hampshire. These coins were similar to those at Sutton Hoo. It is thought that Merovingian coins could have been melted down and stamped with the mark of English Kings. At this time the coins were made of gold.

800 AD
Back to China where Emperor Hein Tsung has run into problems as there is a shortage of coins. He decides to issue paper money notes. This is the beginning of the bank note! It doesn't last as other Emperors make as many notes as they want - which means there are too many and they become worth less and less!

925 - 940 AD
King Athelstan can be thought of as the first King of England. He was the grandson of King Alfred and a great soldier. He invaded Northern England and Scotland and, although both countries (as they then were) fought back later on, he was King of the whole country. He made laws which meant that the weight of silver in any one coin had to be the same depending on the value of the coin. These laws would also help to stop people making their own money (frauds) with less silver.

959 - 975
King Edgar carried on from King Athelstan. He passed laws which said what size the coins had to be, and the different types. He also introduced the idea that coins should be recycled. Brand new coins quickly become grubby and eventually worn down.

Look at some of the coins in your purse - the older ones may well look thinner than some of the newer ones. Think about all the hands, pockets and purses they travel through. As they rub against each other, or fall down through the coin machine, the metal is gradually worn away.

King Edgar decided that coins had to be melted down and re-minted every 6 years. This was quite a good thing for him as there was money to be made through minting coins!

978 - 1016
Under King Ethelred the Unready there were more than 70 mints in the country. This was because Ethelred needed to make a lot of money to pay off the Danes who were threatening to invade. He minted 40 million coins.

1066
Under William the Conqueror the whole country was checked out. The result was a large book: The Doomsday Book, which made a lits of every person, what they did, and if they owned land. William used this very cleverly to set up a system of taxes, and he included coins. Again he was trying to make sure people didn't make their own coins with less silver in them than the official coins.

1200
Have you ever kept a tally of your score? The word 'tally' comes from sticks which were used at this time a bit like a credit card! The wooden stick had a series of notches to keep an account of money owed or lent by the bank. The stick could be split in two down the middle so that each person had a record of the transaction (the amount of money). The bank held onto one half - the foil, and the other person had the stock.

Unfortunately it was very easy (as you can imagine) to alter the stick so that the amount of money changed! You could charge more than you had lent, or try to pay back less!! This system of tallies was finally stopped in 1826. All the tallies were collected in and stored in the Houses of Parliament.

On October 16th 1834 2 men were given the job of burning all the tallies. It is thought they were trying to finish the job as quickly as possible, and so the furnace overheated and the Houses of Parliament burnt down in the fire that followed. Luckily no one was killed.

1275
Marco Polo travels the world - particularly to China, now part of the Mongol Empire where he comes across paper money. This is one of the things he tells everyone about on his return. It still doesn't come into use in Europe for a long time. China stops using paper money in 1455.

1452 - 1519
In Italy Leonardo da Vinci draws, among other things (including a flying machine) a design for a press which could make coins that would be nearly identical. The press is powered by a water mill, and it is from here that we get the word milled money. Milled money is where the edges of the coin are grooved, like a mill stone. This helps to stop forgeries. The word 'mill' can also mean to steal!

1455-1485
Back in England the Wars of the Roses take their toll on the coins in use. The wear and tear is considerable, and people begin to clip the edges off and use all the bits to make more coins! As ever people are also making their own coins. Something needs to be done to stop this happening! But it doesn't happen just yet.

1519 - 1579
Henry VIII's children are on the throne: Edward Vl, Mary and Elizabeth l. A man called Thomas Gresham (1519 - 79) was very important and famous at this time. He was an advisor to Elizabeth l from until 1579, having spent time in Belgium learning all about borrowing and lending foreign money. He knew a lot about money and was able to help Elizabeth with raising the money she needed.

Although he was famous at the time, becoming Sir Thomas Gresham, there is now a famous saying of his which is still used today. It is called Gresham's Law and is to do with the problem of the value of coins. At this time some of the coins were not made of as good a quality of metal as others. It was easier to make coins then, and some people did make their own. This meant that many people were cheated. Gresham said that "bad money drives out good money". This was not a new idea as a Greek called Aristophanes had said something similar in a play he wrote called 'The Frogs'.

What did he mean?
If you had 2 coins in your hand - one good one and one that was a copy - which would you keep? The same thing happened in England. People kept the coins they knew were real, and used the 'bad' ones for spending. In this way the money that was being used in the shops was not as good as the money that people were keeping in their string boxes. So there was less good money being passed around, and the value of money went down.

Another things Gresham did was to set up the Exchange. This was a place in London where people would go to exchange goods and contracts for trade. He wanted it to be as good, and better, than the Exchange in Antwerp. When Elizabeth l opened it in 1571 she gave it the name Royal Exchange.

1600
The Elizabethan Age was also a great time of travel and trade with other countries. New countries were discovered and where there is trade there is money. In 1600 the London East India Company was established based on the pepper trade with India. Pepper is a very important item for trade as it has a high value for its weight.

The East India Company was set up to trade with India, and no one else in England was allowed to trade with India. This meant the company had control of all the trade and that meant money!

1640
Charles l was now the king and he had a lot of trouble trying to get the government to give him money through taxes. He wanted more and in the end he took over the mint so that he had control of the money being made! In the end he had to fight Parliament and he was executed.

1694
The Bank of England was founded and followed in 1965 by the Bank of Scotland. It is the Bank of England that now decides on what is called the interest rate.

Bank notes were first issued by the Bank of England in 1694. At this time they were printed in black, on one side - with no colour. This meant they were very easy to copy. They had to start printing the notes on special watermarked paper from Sweden.

The Bank of Scotland, on the other hand, had to close its doors early in winter time. This was because the light was bad inside the building and after it went dark it was difficult to see if the edges of coins had been cut off (a way of getting hold of the material to make their own coins! By cutting off the edges of lots of coins people could melt them down and make their own.). The Bank of Scotland thought of using coloured banknotes (1777) printed on both sides (1826) to make it harder to copy.

1699 - 1727
Have you heard of Sir Isaac Newton? He is known for his scientific discoveries, and was the person who saw an apple fall from a tree and wrote down the Law of Gravity. He was also put in charge of the Royal Mint. One of the jobs he did was to redesign the coins to make it much harder for people to copy them.

He also caught some of the counterfeiters (people who make coins and use them, pretending they are real coins!). Many of the coins were made with milled edges (bumpy - and so called because they look like the wheels of the mill machinery in which coins were made). If a coin had milled edges it must be real as they are very hard to copy without the proper machinery.

1719-1720
The South Sea Bubble happens! This is another way some people can make large sums of money by making something up. In this case it all started with a real company, The South Sea Company, who were given full charge of all the British trade in the South Seas. Lots of people invested (gave them money to use to set up the company) in the South Sea Company and because it was popular and seemed to be doing well, other people also wanted to invest. Other companies were set up, some of which were real and some which were not.

Then people began to realise that there was something wrong with the company and they began to sell their shares (shares are what you are given if you invest in a company - you own a share of that company and get some of the money they make - profits - each year). The company, and many of the others that had been set up, became worthless and so people did not get their money back. Some rich people lost most of their money and became poor.

When Parliament began to investigate what had happened they found that some of the men behind the scheme had taken their money, left the country and were not going to come back. There have been similar events through history all over the world.

1799
Tokens and foreign coins began to be used widely in Britain. Tokens had come into use in 1797 because there were not enough coins to go round. Bosses began to make tokens which workers could then exchange for real money. they would put a stamp on the token to say where it had come from. Tokens had been used before, but this time it spread and, because there were not enough coins, people began using the tokens in their place!

By 1799 these were used more than real money. This was a problem as it meant British money was not given its real value. It wasn't until 1821 that the use of tokens was stopped.

1824
This was the first time that MPs suggested changing the British currency to decimal. We use a decimal system now where 100p = £1. Before that we used pounds, shilling and pence. 12 pennies = 1 shilling and 20 shillings = £1. This made maths more complicated when adding and taking away money.

Try this sum:

I buy a bar of chocolate for 1 shilling and 4 pence. I give the shopkeeper a £1 note. How much change do I get?

Remember £1 is 20 shillings 1 shilling is 12 pence. Click here for the answer: (18 shillings and 8 pence)

Decimalisation was suggested again in 1963 and we eventually changed to a decimal system in 1971. All the coins were changed - some more slowly than others.

1861
The Post Office became a savings bank. This was very useful as there were Post Offices everywhere so everyone could get to a Post Office. They also opened longer than banks so it was easier to get to. Banks have only recently begun to open longer - they used to open from 9.00 - 3.30 on Monday to Friday. This meant that if you worked you had trouble getting to the bank!

Now everything is changing once again. There are less Post Offices as many villages have found they do not make much money. But those Post Offices that are still there provide people with access to their bank through Link machines, and also acting as an agent for some banks. This means you can get money out of your bank account at the Post Office without having to pay. If you use a Link Machine you have to pay to take money out of your account.

1926
There was a General Strike in Britain. The wages of the miners were going to be lowered. 3 million people went on strike - miners, railway workers, shipyard workers among them. Although many people went back to work after 5 days the miners were on strike from May until October.

1931
Until this time money in Britain had been based on gold. This was stopped and money is based on a complicated system of loans. So you can't go to the bank and ask for £5 worth of gold!

1935
Cowrie shells are still used as money in Nigeria. This carried on until the end of World War 2. This currency has been used the longest and in the most countries.

1960
Most other forms of currency - cattle, shells, beads - have stopped. The only one that continues is the Fei stones in the Island of Yap. Yapese money is made out of stones which have holes drilled in the middle. If money has to be moved from one village to another a long pole is put through the hole and the coin is rolled along the road.

The largest stone is a Mmbu - between 1ft and 2 ft diameter. Gaw stones can be up to 10ft long Ray can be as much as 12ft high and 12 ft wide. These are used to buy land. Yar is shell money and is of different sizes. This is used to buy a bride.

1971
A big change in British money as pounds, shilling and pence are changed to decimal. 100p = £1. The old coins are gradually taken out of the system.

To start with the old sixpence is worth 2 ½ p. There are ½ coins which are the smallest amounts.

The Threepenny bit goes altogether!

Many people think the new coins are light and not as good! Prices seem to go up. But it isn't long before everyone is used to it.

1986
The Big Bang - no not really. The Stock Market changed to being based on computers. Everyone expected disaster. In 1987 there was Black Monday when the value of money fell as everyone expected poor trade figures from the USA.

2004
Money still plays a large part in all our lives.

• Wars can be fought over money.
• People can die because they live in poor countries where there is not enough money to buy food and medicine.
• Many countries have borrowed money and have to pay back large amounts (debt).