Today’s Crossword: Hungry? Pay for food with shells in ancient China

Today’s Crossword: Hungry? Pay for food with shells in ancient China

The Swedish pop group ABBA once sang: "Money, money, money“! They were, no doubt, singing about today's Crossword. Click to play and guess all the different currencies. Before the invention of money, people would make, grow, or do things for one another. But as civilisations grew and expanded, it became harder to keep a tally of how much people owed each other. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, bartering became inconvenient when it involved large or heavy items, like sacks of barley. People started to realise that smaller items of value made more sense, in terms of trade. The history of using money goes back 40,000 years. Its form has evolved over millennia, from natural objects to paper, plastic and cryptocurrency. In China, 3,000 years ago, shells were commonly used as currency. Other rare objects found in Nature emerged as units of value for exchange, such as mother-of-pearl shells in the Americas and cowry shells in Africa, Europe, and Asia. And of course, precious metals and stones like gold, silver, copper, amber and obsidian were always accepted in an exchange of goods. The first known form of currency is the Mesopotamian shekel, which was used approximately 5,000 years ago. The first facility