Michael Hudson — Origins of Money and Interest: Palatial Credit, not Barter

Neolithic and Bronze Age economies operated mainly on credit. Because of the time gap between planting and harvesting, few payments were made at the time of purchase. When Babylonians went to the local alehouse, they did not pay by carrying grain around in their pockets. They ran up a tab to be settled at harvest time on the threshing floor. The ale women who ran these “pubs” would then pay most of this grain to the palace for consignments advanced to them during the crop year. These payments were financial in character, not on-the-spot barter-type exchange.

As a means of payment, the early use of monetized grain and silver was mainly to settle such debts. This monetization was not physical; it was administrative and fiscal. The paradigmatic payments involved the palace or temples, which regulated the weights, measures and purity standards necessary for money to be accepted. Their accountants that developed money as an administrative tool for forward planning and resource allocation, and for transactions with the rest of the economy to collect land rent and assign values to trade consignments, which were paid in silver at the end of each seafaring or caravan cycle....

Naked Capitalism
Michael Hudson: Origins of Money and Interest: Palatial Credit, not Barter

See also

Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of Neoliberalism
High Cost Economy

There’s an idea – deregulate the banks!

Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Salt as ancient money

Nikolov said the settlement near Provadia was home to some 350 people who likely produced salt from the nearby rock-salt deposits.

"They boiled brine from salt springs in kilns, baked it into bricks, which were then exchanged for other commodities with neighboring tribes," Nikolov said, citing as possible evidence the gold and copper jewellery and artifacts that have been unearthed in the region.

The most valuable is a collection of 3,000 gold pieces unearthed 40 years ago near the Black Sea city of Varna. It is believed to be the oldest gold treasure in the world.

"For millenniums, salt was one of the most valued commodities, salt was the money," Nikolov said adding that this explained the massive stone walls meant to keep the salt safe.

The two-storey houses, as well as the copper needles and pottery found in graves at the site, suggest a community of wealthy people whose likely work was the once-lucrative production of salt.

Al Jazeera
Europe's 'oldest town' found in Bulgaria

Lord Keynes — Debate on the Origin of Money

Lord Keynes updates the debate on money origins.

Social Democracy For The 21St Century
Debate on the Origin of Money
Lord Keynes

Non-Commercial Money and Theories of Money

Now how do the observations above [of David Graeber] fit in with other theories of money’s origins such as(1) the barter spot trade origin theory (e.g., held by Adam Smith, Mill, Menger and Mises),(2) the credit origin theory (Mitchell Innes), (3) chartalism (Knapp), and (4) Grierson’s (1977 and 1978) thesis on wergeld and money?And how does it fit in with the empirical evidence that a unit of account was developed by planners in temple institutions in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia? 

It fact, I would contend that it is perfectly complementary, because no single theory is the entire story. The subject of the origins of money is a deeply complex and difficult problem, and these are all pieces of the puzzle. It is obvious that the historical origin of money cannot be traced to one moment of invention in the past: for there have undoubtedly been multiple independent instances in history where things have emerged as a unit of account and medium of exchange in different societies in different times.

Read it at Social Democracy for the 21st Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
Observations on Non-Commercial Money
by Lord Keynes

"The Efficiency of Markets in Preindustrial Societies"

The Centre for Global Economic History as posted links to papers delivered its recent colloquium, The Efficiency of Markets in Preindustrial Societies. (h/t Dirk Bezemer)

There are a couple of papers on money.