MONEY

Money has a long journey in human societies. It has gone through barter deals and exchange of goods, metal coins, copper coins, golden and silver coins, paper notes, debit and credit cards to transform themselves to something we call ‘electronic money’. Today we live in societies in which money is almost invisible. They have a discrete but powerful electronic presence. But what is money? I am sure we all know the answer to this question and even more that we all have some kind of connection with money itself or with the idea of money. And writing about money could take different directions. In this text we will try to look at the historical development of money, about how money is used in mathematics and about the money’s influence in our lives.

Money is best described as a medium of exchange. The concept of money has been around since the dawn of human civilization. Money allows an individual to trade what they have for what they need or want. What is considered to be money has varied over the ages and has included diverse items. Currently, there are over 150 currencies used worldwide. 70% of the monetary value in the world is denoted in the U.S. dollar, Euro, U.K. pound, Japanese Yen, and Chinese Yuan.

Money has been a part of human history for almost 3,000 years. From the origins of bartering to modern money, this is how the system has evolved. At the dawn of humanity, bartering was used in lieu of money to buy goods. One of the earliest forms of barter included cattle, sheep, as well as vegetables and grain. The first known currency was created by King Alyattes in Lydia, now part of Turkey, in 600 BC. The first coin ever minted features a roaring lion. Coins then evolved into bank notes around 1661 AD. The first credit card was introduced in 1946.

Money is a  means of trading wealth indirectly, not directly as with barter. Money  is a mechanism that facilitates this process. Money may take a physical form as in coins and notes, or may exist as a written or electronic account.  

Electronic money is currency that is stored in banking computer systems. Various companies allow for transactions to be made with electronic money.

The invention of money took place before the beginning of written history. There is evidence that many things were bartered in ancient markets that could be described as a medium of exchange. These included livestock and grain – things directly useful in their own right – but also merely attractive items such as cowrie shells or beads  were exchanged for more useful goods or services. Such exchanges would be better described as barter and not yet money. Ancient civilisations developed in different places and very often far away from each other and this very early development involves economic systems which precede written history. That is  why it is not easy to trace with exact accuracy the day and year when the transition from barter systems to monetary systems happened. There are many hypotheses and theories about how this transition happened. But it goes down to the beginning of human civilisation - the use of barter-like methods may date back to at least 100,000 years ago. Economists call this type of economy ‘gift economy’.

Bronze and Copper cowrie imitations were manufactured by China at the end of the Stone Age and could be considered some of the earliest forms of metal coins. The first silver coins developed out of lumps of silver. They soon took the familiar round form of today, and were stamped with various gods and emperors to mark their authenticity. These early coins first appeared in Lydia. The first known paper banknotes appeared in China. 

Gold was officially made the standard of value in England in 1816.  Banknotes had been used in England and Europe for several hundred years before this time, but their worth had never been tied directly to gold. In the United States, the Gold Standard Act was officially enacted in 1900, which helped lead to the establishment of a central bank. 

The massive Depression of the 1930-s, felt worldwide, marked the beginning of the end of the gold standard. Today, currency continues to change and develop.

In our digital age, economic transactions regularly take place electronically, without the exchange of any physical currency and this will most likely continue to happen in the future.

How is money used in mathematics? Basically money is related to numbers so as mathematics. In Maths you perform basic arithmetic skills - counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. We find the percentage of an amount, which could be part of financial operations. We operate with fractions of an amount and we need decimal numbers when talking about money. Money is exchanged using similar operations. In business you calculate profit, loss and revenue, all of these terms are found using basic Maths operations. You calculate total money in your pocket by simply adding numbers on notes, that is basically Maths. Maths can help a lot to educate people about financial literacy – learning about budgeting, saving, investing and basic financial decision making could improve people’s confidence when contacting financial institutions. And this financial education could start with the subject of money, which is more familiar to the students. Real-life contexts can help to  learn a range of mathematical concepts and numeracy skills like lending and borrowing, calculating interest rates.  Money is not only about shopping but about making the humans heroes of their own invention in a much broader context than just in shops. Maths will be much more successful in lessons if it is not associated only with worksheets but if makes connections with real-life situations. In that way mathematics will have social connections and presence, and a more human face, because mathematics plays a huge role in people's daily lives. 

Here are some activities for you:

Activity 1: Can you find in your own language ten interesting sayings, proverbs and idioms with the main word to be ‘money’? Can you try to translate them into English to see if they will keep the word ‘money’ or if they will lose it according to the broader meaning they will develop after the translation.

Activity 2: Can you research about the types of money used in the country you are coming from? Can you compare your findings with the tradition of using different types of money in this country?

Let us ask ourselves one more time - What is money? Is it something that everybody is dreaming of? I don’t think so. Is it something we learn about since early age and we are taught that the more money we have the happier we will be? Probably, yes, we learn about the power of money when we are old enough. Unfortunately, sometimes we are told the wrong thing that money is everything and we should do our best to get more money. But we can agree that money is that kind of subject everybody has their own opinion about. The opinions could be quite controversial.

It is true and we cannot deny the fact that people need money to live in the society they created. Is there any money in the animal world? I don’t think so, they are free and careless about this because they live in a way which looks to us to be much more simple. The animals don’t produce anything, they are too busy to live happily. Their main worry is how and where to find food to survive and how to find a partner to reproduce life in the spring. And that’s it. The rest of the time they are just wandering around, if they are not trapped somewhere by humans. If it wasn't humans the animals would live quite happier and nothing would bother them, they would only obey nature's natural laws. Birds, for example, would practise the whole day divine singing, trying to connect with the Creator in the most beautiful and peaceful way. But no, this is not enough for humans, we want to control everything. We are so guilty of constantly destroying the home of the animals and nature itself, we try to organise and shape and change nature in a way that pleases only humans. Changing nature, we change animals’ lives as well, most of the time for the worst. Most of the time we don’t consider animals at all. Where is the connection with money, you would ask, trying to change the guilty topic. The connection with money is so obvious. We sell animals for money to each other, we don’t ask them for permission to kill them and to sell parts of their expensive bodies. Money could make people greedy and guilty.

What about the humans? We consider ourselves to be more intelligent than animals but we allowed for centuries so many crimes to happen in the name of the golden metal. We allowed ourselves to turn into greedy shallow consumers who rarely think of their internal development. Don’t get me wrong. We need money, of course we do. We need it to have food, a roof above our heads, education, to travel, to maintain our health and for so many other noble causes, like to help people who are vulnerable and for some reasons cannot even have food. And it is such a shame that because of something so simple like money some people live in such poverty and they don’t even have food. There should be enough money for everybody in this human world. How do we get money? We work for it. And here is the trouble with money. It is inside our heart and mind - if we work only for money this will be the saddest life. We recognise the power of money but we recognise as well that the biggest part in us wants to ignore it’s material presence so it doesn’t influence how we see the world. Our own concern should be always to develop ourselves, to live our life in a way that we are surrounded by everything that inspires and develops us. There are many other things which are much more important. And they are different for all of us. But what we should not do - is to identify ourselves with the amount of money we are getting for the moment as a salary. We are much more than that. Because looking back to the early history we can see that so many murders happened because of money. Or not exactly because of the money but because of lack of control and lack of more refined energies that lead humans. The control is in our hands. What we need to remember is that money itself is nothing and they could have that much power and influence on us how we allow them to have. Wealth has many directions and dimensions and money is just one of the labels that indicates how wealthy we are. The others with equal importance are: our health, education, our level of intelligence, our humanity, our kindness, our self-respect, our likeability, our charm, our values, our talents. Can we imagine society without money? In a spiritual way, when we share our human presence with each other we obviously don’t need money. And we should never allow the amount of money some people possess to change our opinion about them. Good is good and wrong is wrong and it doesn’t matter how much money you have if you are a bully you are not a friend of mine. And money should not be able to buy innocence but only honest behaviour and attitude to others. Money cannot make you a hero in other people's eyes but only you, your talents, your dignity, pride, courage and honest philosophy of life. Our importance doesn’t depend on money.

There are so many aspects that relate to the subject of money so we can talk a lot. I hope that I made you a little bit think about all this. I will be very happy if this happens.

(E. S. Lyubenova; LoveMaths Story for my students)