Money: from bartering to bank cards
📖 In short
Before money was invented, people swapped things: wheat for dates, or a sheep for cloth. This “bartering” was hard. Then money came along: coins and notes we use to buy what we want and to work out prices and change.
🤩 Did you know?
- The first Islamic gold dinar was minted under the caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, around the year 696.
- It's said that salt was once used as pay, and that's where the English word “salary” comes from.
- The oldest known coins appeared in the kingdom of Lydia about 2600 years ago.
- The first banknotes appeared in China more than 1000 years ago.
🔎 Find out more
🌟 The trouble with bartering
If the person with wheat wants dates, but the person with dates doesn't want wheat but shoes, the deal doesn't happen! So people needed something everyone would accept: salt and shells, then gold and silver.
🔍 The dinar and the dirham
Muslims minted the dinar in gold and the dirham in silver, with Arabic writing on them. Even today, “dinar” and “dirham” are the names of currencies in many countries.
💡 Working out price and change
If you buy a storybook for 35 and pay with a 50 note, the change is 50 − 35 = 15. A clever shopkeeper works out change by counting on: 35, then 40 (five), then 50 (ten): five and ten make 15.
🎯 Money today
Today we also pay with bank cards and phones, so we don't see the money. But the maths is the same: we need to know how much we have, how much we spend and how much we save for something we love.
🧮 Worked examples
- 20 + 10 + 5 = 35We pay 35 with three coins.
- 50 − 35 = 15Change from 50.
- 4 × 12 = 48The price of 4 notebooks at 12 each.
📚 Key words
- Bartering
- Swapping one thing for another without money
- Price
- What we pay to buy something
- Remainder
- What the seller gives back when we pay more than the price
🧪 Try it at home
Play “shop” at home: put prices on things from the kitchen, and make paper money (1, 2, 5, 10 and 20). Take turns being the seller and the buyer, and work out the change.
🧩 Test yourself
1 What do we call swapping things without money?
2 You paid 20 for something that costs 13. How much change do you get?
3 What metal was the old Islamic dinar made of?