The First Money
7th century B.C.: The first standardized coins
were created in what is now western Turkey.
They were made of electrum, a naturally
occurring amalgam of gold and silver. In
Rome, coins were minted near the temple of
the goddess Juno Moneta, which gave us the
words “mint” and “money”. Offa, an Anglo-
Saxon king, introduced the first English coin
known as the penny around 790 A.D. A
copper shortage forced China to introduce the
world’s first paper money into circulation in
the 9th century – 700 years before Europe did
so. In the 1500s the St. Joachimsthal mine in
what is now the Czech Republic introduced
large silver coins called thaler. The Spanish
version of the thaler became the first
worldwide currency. The English called it the
dollar, and the U.S. dollar was based on it.