Name: The History of Money || Graded Reader || Improve Your English Fluency ✅️
Uploaded: 2026-02-01T08:53:27.000Z
Duration: 22 min 10 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The imperative

To-infinitive

It is a story about something you use every single day.

But before we talk about money, we must go back.

If I had a basket of red apples and you had a warm blanket, we could trade.

I give you my apples, you give me your blanket.

Imagine I have apples, but I don't need a blanket.

I have apples, but the person I need help from wants a chicken.

This was the big challenge of the ancient world.

To trade, both people had to want exactly what the other person had.

This is what experts call a double coincidence of wants.

It is a big name for a very simple problem.

People spent so much time looking for the right person to trade with.

You had to find someone who had what you wanted and wanted what you had.

Imagine trying to buy a loaf of bread today by offering a used book.

It would take a long time to find a hungry baker who likes to read.

In small villages, people knew each other.

They shared things because they were neighbors.

They trusted that if they helped someone today, that person would help them tomorrow.

But as villages grew into cities, people became strangers.

You needed something that everyone agreed was valuable.

You needed a bridge between your apples and the shoemaker's shoes.

This need for a bridge changed everything.

It was the first step toward the world we know today.

They realized they needed a better way to trade.

They needed something small and easy to carry.

They needed something that would not rot, like apples.

This means they used real things that everyone wanted.

In different parts of the world, people chose different things.

Near the ocean, many people chose seashells.

In some places, one shell could buy a small fish.

For thousands of years, shells were the most popular money in the world.

People in Africa, Asia, and even North America used them.

Can you imagine carrying a bag of shells to the store?

In other places, they used big stones or even feathers.

One of the most important early moneys was salt.

It was very important for keeping food fresh.

Without salt, meat would go bad quickly because everyone needed it.

Did you know that the word salary comes from the word salt?

Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, and it was their solarium.

And if you have a lot of salt, it is very heavy to carry.

People started to look for something better.

They wanted something that would last forever.

They wanted something that was very hard to find, so it stayed valuable.

They turned their eyes toward the ground.