Properties of Good Money

Throughout history, societies have used an astonishing variety of items as money: cowrie shells in Africa and Asia, enormous stone discs on the island of Yap, salt in ancient Rome (the word 'salary' comes from the Latin word for salt), cattle in pastoral communities, and eventually precious metals like gold and silver. But not all of these worked equally well. Over time, the items that survived as money shared a specific set of properties.