THE ORIGIN OF PRIMITIVE MONEY. 



305 



of antiquarians. Mr, Del Mar gives us pictures of several of these, the 

 earliest being a coin of the Emperor Sung, dating 2257 years before 

 Christ. These early coins are of various shapes, some being round 

 with a square or round hole in the center, and some oblong with a 

 hole at one end, evidently for stringing them. These oblong coins are 

 spoken of as knife-shaped or bell-shaped, though the resemblances thus 

 indicated are not very apparent. Dr. Tylor, whose careful research no 

 evidence of this nature escapes, observes, in his standard work on " An- 

 thropology," that " perhaps the earliest money may have been the Chi- 

 nese little marked cubes of gold, and the pieces of copper in the shape 

 of shirts and knives, as though intended to represent real shirts and 

 knives." This is certainly an acute and striking suggestion ; but we 

 have to consider that the circular pieces, the most common of all, could 

 hardly have been intended to represent any implement or other object 

 of traffic. And when we refer to California, where, as has been seen, 

 oblong pieces of shell, perforated at one end, were used as a variety of 

 their currency, we are led to suppose that the early copper coins of 

 the Chinese, both oblong and round, derived their shapes from imita- 

 tion of the still earlier disks and strips of tortoise-shell which they 

 superseded. 



Ancient Chinese Coins. 



Ullo.— Oblong Shell-Money of California. 



A singular usage still prevailing in China seems to point back to a 

 time when the ordinary money was made of some combustible mate- 

 rial. " Mock-money," as it is called, is composed of tin-foil and paper, 

 and this is burned in large quantities at funerals and in sacrifices to the 

 gods. In California, as has been seen, the Indians were accustomed 

 to burn their shell-money in a similar manner. The Eastern Indians 

 buried wampum with their dead, and burned it in their sacrifices. 



Thus shell-money of this peculiar description, composed of small 

 circular disks, perforated and strung together, and used both as cur- 

 rency and also (so far as our information extends) in important public 

 and religious ceremonies, has been traced from the eastern coast of 

 North America westward across the continent to California, and thence 

 through the Micronesian Archipelago to China. In no other parts of 

 the world, except those situated along or near this line (as in some 

 parts of Melanesia), has the use of this singular currency been known. 

 It is possible, of course, that the custom may have originated inde- 

 TOL, xxFni. — 20 



