I was skimming a paper linked to in Tom's Bookstaber thread below and came across a reference to this document that analyses some archaeological records from ancient Babylon.
The purpose of the paper was to analyse price patterns exhibited by certain commodities [Ed: sigh...] but perhaps more interesting to MNE readers may be what it reveals about the unit of account or "money" or monetary system that Babylon was using during the period under investigation (652 BC forward).
Archaeological excavations started in 1899 by Robert Koldewey have uncovered astronomical diaries, written in cuneiform on clay tablets, from the period 652 B.C. to 69 A.D. Since the tablets contain celestial observations, all information inscribed on them is dated, including records of the weather, the level of the Euphrates River, socio-political events and market quotations of six commodities: barley, dates, mustard (cascuta), cress (cardamom), sesame and wool. The commodity prices are expressed in weight quantities that could be purchased per shekel of silver, recorded three times a month.The Babylonians were using weight measures of the "Noble Metal" silver, as their unit of account and apparently as their "money" or coins or their physical unit of exchange. The unit being the "shekel" a weight measure that is popularly thought to have been based on the weight of a certain number of grains of barley mandated by some governmental authority.
This monetary arrangement itself looks like it was a key factor in the downfall of Babylon, as the Prophet Isaiah wrote:
17 Behold Me rousing against them the Medes, who are not accounting silver, And gold - they are not delighting in it. (Isaiah 13:17)Here, we can see from Isaiah's account that Babylon's use of weight measures of silver became a relative disadvantage to them versus apparently a different approach used by the Medes; and ultimately took them down.
The monetary systems we humans design and use to facilitate and account for exchange between ourselves are perhaps the most important aspects of our economic policies we are authorized to implement.
Looking back now at the 20th century, we can see that there for sure was a lot of economic development and of course the historic high levels of destruction. But one thing we should not overlook here in the west is that we somehow became able to throw off the yoke of these so-called "precious" metals, weight measures of which were for centuries used as our medium of exchange between ourselves.
FDR and Richard Nixon, two US Presidents delivering a knockdown left-right combination to the head across several decades against these metals. Metals that somehow continuously seek to establish themselves as a chaos inducing medium of exchange between we humans.... have we reached the ten count yet I wonder.