Excerpt from Aristotle's Politics (c. 350BC) :
When the inhabitants of one country became more dependent on those of another, and they imported what they needed, and exported what they had too much of, money necessarily came into use. For the various necessaries of life are not easily carried about, and hence men agreed to employ in their dealings with each other something which was intrinsically useful and easily applicable to the purposes of life, for example, iron, silver, and the like. Of this the value was at first measured simply by size and weight, but in process of time they put a stamp upon it, to save the trouble of weighing and to mark the value.Aristotle cites the advent of mercantilism as leading to the beginning use of "money" in the form of weight measures of useful metals. Then cites efficiency as the reason for transitioning from weight measures of metals to a pure state currency or nomisma.
