October 29, 2024 • 69 mins
Embark on a fascinating exploration of ancient Anatolia and uncover the secrets of how the Ionian Greeks and Lydians shaped the economic and cultural landscapes of their time. Discover how the Ionian Greeks turned western Anatolia into a bustling hub of sea trade, setting up expansive networks across the Black Sea and laying the groundwork for the rise of Miletus as a center of commerce and learning. I share the riveting story of the Lydians' cultural exchanges with the Ionians, which paved the way for the revolutionary introduction of coinage—a financial innovation that forever altered the dynamics of trade in the ancient world.
Through strategic alliances and visionary economic strategies, Lydian kings like Ardys and Alyattes transformed Lydia into a dominant economic power. Hear about the transition from cumbersome metal ingots to the more practical and valuable coins, which spurred trade and streamlined tax collection. We'll explore the captivating tale of how Lydia minted the first coins and how these small, stamped pieces of metal became catalysts for economic progress, inspiring a leap to monetary economies and setting the stage for the fiscal frameworks of today.
Join me, Mike D, as I unravel the societal impacts of this economic revolution, from the vast wealth and luxurious lifestyles of Lydian elites to the economic ripple effects of ancient warfare. Understand how Lydia's innovations in coinage not only facilitated economic growth but also fueled social stratification and conspicuous consumption, mirroring economic behaviors that persist in modern times. This episode offers a treasure trove of insights, connecting ancient monetary practices to contemporary economic systems and providing an engaging perspective on how early trading innovations continue to influence our world.
To support the podcast through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/HistoryOfMoneyBankingTrade
Visit us at https://moneybankingtrade.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D, and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
(00:24):
entertaining.
Now, I'm not a historian but,like Dan Conlon likes to say, I
am a fan of history.
We last left off with the riseand fall of the Hattians, the
Hittites and the Phrygians, justto name a few.
We also discussed somemythological stories that you
(00:45):
may be familiar with that hadtheir origins in ancient Turkey.
But, most importantly, wetalked about how the many
kingdoms that had risen and fellup to this point ultimately
played a major part in thedevelopment and trade in and out
of Anatolia.
(01:12):
The Greeks arrived in westernAnatolia sometime after the late
Bronze Age collapse and thecolonization of Ionia, which was
an area located on the westerncoast of Anatolia.
Due to its location on thecoast and the fact that they
were already accustomed to thesea, the Ionian Greeks quickly
became experienced sea traders.
As such, they primarily tradedwith the Lydians, the Egyptians
(01:34):
and even the various city-statesin and around the Italian
peninsula.
This extensive trade ensuredthat the Ionians would become
one of the wealthiestcivilizations, and they used
this wealth to set up theirtrading settlements around the
Black Sea area as well.
Once the city of Sardis fell,the Ionian city of Miletus
(01:57):
replaced Sardis as the hub oftrade and scholarship.
Like I was alluding topreviously, sardis was a
cosmopolitan city, so therefore,some of the great minds of
Babylonia, egypt, lydia andvarious Phoenician city-states
made their way there, and theywere able to share much of their
(02:18):
scholarly research.
This research included ideasrelated to the sciences along
with navigation geography.
Research included ideas relatedto the sciences along with
navigation, geography, trade andcommerce.
In addition, the elites ofSardis, as well as Miletus,
became some of the biggestcollectors of art and other
crafts, which meant that theartisans from all over the known
(02:38):
world at the time would havemade their way to Western
Anatolia to make and producetheir various works of art and
other finished goods, for thatmatter.
In fact, to show you how Greekreligion influenced the Lydia
religion, aliades and Cretaceoushired Ionian craftsmen to
create offerings to the godApollo at Delphi.
As a result, this would havebeen a great example of how the
(03:03):
Ionian Greek economy benefiteddirectly from the sharing of
cultural ideas and, moreimportantly, lydian wealth.
Since the Ionians and theLydians maintained a close
working relationship, they wereable to use each other as a
source of knowledge to maketrade more efficient.
Then this efficiency wouldactually go up a notch when the
(03:25):
Lydians had developed their owncoinage, which they would have
introduced to the rest ofAnatolia and then the Greeks
would have quickly adopted.
So I want to be clear the firstpart of the Anatolian episode
was set up to lead into thisparticular episode, because I
(03:46):
wanted you to get a broadbackground of Anatolia before I
got into talking about Lydia.
In reality, I was originallyonly going to speak about the
Lydians, but I kind of figuredit would make more sense to have
some understanding of Anatoliaas a whole before I got into
Lydia.
Now, I suspect that the averageperson has never heard of Lydia
(04:12):
and probably knows almostnothing about Lydian culture,
even though they were probablythe ones that had maybe one of
their earliest and maybe biggestimpacts on the development of
modern economies and trade.
The fact is, the Kingdom ofLydia isn't a well-known ancient
(04:33):
kingdom.
Lydia was located on thewestern edge of Anatolia, which
says modern-day Turkey, andLydia was originally part of the
Hittite Empire before it fellin the late Bronze Age collapse.
In addition, the Greeksoccupied its Aegean shores as
early as the 13th century BCE,around the fall of the Hittite
(04:57):
Empire.
As such, you will see a lot ofcrossover between the Lydian
culture and the Ionian Greekculture, especially the religion
.
That's the biggest crossoverthat you'll see.
But the Lydians had their ownlanguage, which was derived from
Indo-European dialect.
While historians have figuredout ancient Lydian grammar,
(05:21):
there are some words that theydon't understand yet, so it's
kind of a work in progress.
At this point, lydia woulddevelop into a very influential
yet smallish city-state.
A lot of it probably comes backto the beginnings, because
initially it was run by peacefulfarmers who generally had good
(05:41):
relations with their neighbors.
I mean, it's kind of not unlikea lot of other ancient
societies as well.
Now, it's worth noting that,due to its location in western
Anatolia, that the Lydians andthe Greeks lived peacefully near
each other.
As a result, they ended upsharing a lot of cultural norms,
like I said earlier, includingmany religious belief systems.
(06:04):
They ended up sharing a lot ofcultural norms, like I said
earlier, including manyreligious belief systems,
including their religiousfigures.
In addition, greeks had a majorinfluence on the Lydians'
alphabetic writing systems,which the Phoenicians had first
developed.
This might be the reason whyHerodotus wrote extensively
about the Lydians.
The issue with discussing Lydiais the information isn't really
(06:25):
coming from first-hand accounts.
Instead, the information thatwe get is from the Greeks,
especially Herodotus, and, asmany of you know pretty well,
herodotus isn't exactly the bestsource of information because
he was prone to take some wildexaggerations at times.
In fact, herodotus states thatLydia was founded by Her some
(06:48):
wild exaggerations at times.
In fact, herodotus states thatLydia was founded by Hercules.
So there's that.
But Herodotus' stories weremeant to be spoken in public
forums, so taking liberties forentertainment was kind of part
of his deal.
So that's why many of hiswritings were a bit outrageous
at times.
So you got to understand thatthe writing.
(07:09):
So people can, you know, speakthese to people and you know you
want to have some kind ofoutrageous bits and parts
because you want to keep peopleengaged.
So if you're asking yourself whythe name Lydia, well, it is
believed that the regent got hisname from a first king who was
known as Lydas, of which hewould have founded the capital
(07:29):
of Sardis.
Now, the earliest history ofLydia is quite fascinating to me
because it's wrapped in myth,but the earliest stories are
great nonetheless.
Nonetheless, the earliest rootsof the kingdom are from a king
(07:49):
named Candolus, who was the lastking of the Heraclid dynasty,
and he would have ruled Lydiafrom Sardis in the 8th century
BCE.
Legend has it that Candolus hadan extremely beautiful wife.
As such, he instructed hisservant, named Yegas, to spy on
the queen while she was naked sothat he could see for himself
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how beautiful she was.
However, that plan backfiredquickly because the queen
discovered Yegas spying on herand she was essentially
horrified when she learned whathad happened.
She insisted that Yigas killthe king to preserve her honor.
Yigas follows her advice, killsthe king and usurps the throne.
(08:32):
Now, according to the Greeks,they claimed that Yigas was a
tyrant, but the Oracle of Delphiwas said to have applauded Egas
because he was said to haveprevented a civil war when he
usurped the throne around 680BCE.
I mean that right there seemsvery interesting, if not a way,
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for the king to promote positivePR for himself.
You know, use the highpriestess to put out the good
word that he had prevented abloodbath in the streets, so he
was doing it for the good of thepeople and not for himself.
So that's a pretty interestinglittle promotional stunt, but uh
, you know, that's that's whathe's going to do back in the day
.
So so from there, basically, anew line of kings was created,
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as king Ardis rose to the throneafter his father, yigas, was
killed by the Sumerians.
Ardes mainly focused on militaryconquests, so one of his first
moves was to approach theAssyrian king Ashurbanipal with
tribute and form an allianceagainst the Sumerians.
In addition, he looked tosubdue Greek city-states to the
(09:44):
west.
By doing so, ardes attacked theIonian Greek city of Miletus
and succeeded in capturing thecity of Priene, after which
Priene would remain under directcontrol of the Lydian kingdom.
Miletus was a different story,as it was too powerful to
conquer and it had a strong armyto back it.
(10:06):
Instead of trying to subjugatethe Milesians, he allowed them
some kind of freedom, such asallowing them to build new
cities south of the Black Sea.
In return, miletus was forcedto pay tribute to Lydia.
This proved to be a pretty wisemove, because in the end, it
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would have spared both sides acostly war in terms of money and
lives.
So in the end, he was able toexpand his borders and increase
Lydian wealth.
But unfortunately, ardes waskilled, likely when the
Sumerians invaded Lydia andsacked most of Sardis.
So really, what we're seeing isLydia is in a bit of turmoil
(10:54):
right now because of the outsideattacks that were coming into
the kingdom, but the kingdomwould have still survived
nonetheless.
Aliadis was the fourth king ofthe Myrna dynasty in Lydia.
He was the son of Sidiotes, whomay have died fighting the
Sumerians in 653 BCE.
He was therefore the grandsonof Ardes and the great-grandson
(11:20):
of Aegis.
He died after he reigned forabout 50 years, and then he was
succeeded by his son, cretaceous, who was probably the most
famous person from Lydia.
By the time Aliades got to thethrone, he had inherited a
couple wars.
The way he dealt with this washe would have formed an alliance
(11:43):
with the Scythians, of whichthey would have entered Anatolia
and defeated the Sumerians, sothey were no longer a threat.
However, the Scythians were nowa dominant player in central
Anatolia, but they would beexpelled by the Medes after the
destruction of the Neo-AssyrianEmpire.
So right now, aliades isprobably thinking nah, this is
(12:06):
great, I don't have to worryabout the Sumerians anymore.
But he now had another problem.
He had a mead problem Now withregards to the continued
conflict with the Alian Greeks.
Aliades probably viewed themdifferently, because he honored
many of their Greek gods.
Furthermore, he needed thegrain that Miletus had produced.
(12:30):
Therefore, you kind of put twoand two together and he decided
to make peace with Miletus,which led to a profitable
trading relationship, becauseMiletus had excess grains but
few metal resources sort of likethe people of Sumer and Akkad
While Lydia had plenty of thosemetals, but they didn't have
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enough grain to feed hispopulation.
So, with the peace at hand tohis immediate west, he then
probably knew it was just amatter of time before he had to
deal with his growing meadproblem to the east.
But before I get there, I wantedto get into what made Lydia so
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special.
The Lydian economy was, likemost of the ancient world,
initially built throughagriculture.
The ancient world initiallybuilt through agriculture, but
as populations grew anddivisions of labor took hold,
the Lydians were able to exploittheir abundance of natural
resources, of metals such asgold, silver, iron and zinc.
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In addition, the Lydians wereknown for manufacturing elegant
fabrics and clothing, along withceramics.
Lydia, due to its location, wasalso heavily influenced by the
Mesopotamians to the east andsouth.
Because of this, trade had togo through Lydia if people from
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the east and west were to trade.
Like I said, Lydia had hugereserves of silver and gold that
was easily mined.
With that being said, the kingsof Lydia mined the metals and
originally stamped their ingotswith their official government
seal so that traders couldeasily see the weight and where
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the ingot had come from.
The kings then decided that itwould be a good idea to shrink
down the ingots to a smallersize, which meant that they were
easy to be made divisible fortrade efficiency.
No one is really sure whichking downsized the size and the
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weight of the ingots into asmaller micro unit, but it may
have been done during the reignof King Eliades, who was in
power from 619 to 560 BCE, so hewas in power for quite a long
time.
These smaller ingots obviouslyhelped trade, but it also made
it easier to collect taxes.
This ultimately meant that theLydian kings could easily
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redistribute these small ingotsmuch more efficiently.
Let us not forget,mesopotamians have used metal
money in the forms of metalingots for over a thousand years
by this point.
But the process was inefficientas the traders would need to
weigh out the ingots for eachtransaction, and they weren't
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very divisible either, so therewould have been some manual work
to divide the ingots down toeven smaller units.
These micro units wereoriginally electron metals which
were naturally occurring mixesof silver and gold metals.
The way I've seen it explainedis that they were basically
(15:52):
nuggets that were traded,whether they meant it or not.
The thing that made thesenuggets so effective was the
fact that they were easier totransport and conceal from
potential thieves.
But, more importantly, theywere easily subdivided, to the
point that, theoretically, theycould be worth only a few days
(16:14):
worth of labor or worth aportion of a farmer's harvest.
The interesting thing aboutphysical coinage is that the
coins were ultimately preservedin the archaeological record.
Now, as I've mentioned in thepast, the idea of widespread
barter being used as a sort ofmoney may not have been a real
(16:36):
thing, because there reallyisn't any evidence of barter.
Instead, a lot of the latestthinking is there was a
widespread credit arrangementsystem that people used, and
what they would do is they wouldsettle up at a specified time
period.
The issue with this is thatmost records of the world would
(16:56):
not have survived, especiallythese, when these arrangements
were written on some sort ofpaper.
So finding hordes of protocoins or ingots was a great
source of economic information.
And just a little econ 101refresher.
We generally view money ashaving three functions, which
would have been a medium ofexchange, a unit of accounts and
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a store of value.
Now the issue with theseelectric nuggets was the alloy
of gold and silver would havevaried, in its natural state,
between 65 and 85 percent gold.
In addition, the traders reallydidn't have the ability to
weigh or use touchstones to tellthe percentage of the material
(17:42):
with any precision.
Now it is widely believed thatif the Illidians had the ability
to separate the raw electrumbetween gold and silver, they
might have done so, but thetechnology took some time to
develop.
Although metals were abundant,they were rarely found in their
(18:05):
pure state, so they would haverequired some sort of separation
techniques that consumed largeamounts of human labor and
energy.
These metals were typicallyextracted from mines that were
owned by the king, along withthe silt of the Pactolus and
Hermos rivers, remember.
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According to myth, the Pactolusriver was filled with gold
because King Midas had washed inthe river to rid himself of the
gift bestowed upon him byDionysus.
These electron micro ingotsbecame known as the world's
first coins.
They were initially produced bypouring the molten metal on a
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plate.
Over the years, this evolvedinto pouring the metal into a
mold, which would have createdblank disks, which were called
flans.
Once these blanks were cooled,they would be struck with their
symbol by a hammer, which wouldallow the user to know the
origin of the coin.
They weren't very sophisticatedat first, as they were just
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basic round shapes of metal witha basic stamp.
Stamping the coins with anofficial seal would have
conferred official value to it,which set the stater apart from
all other tokens that had beenused in trade previously.
By making these coins astandardized weight and size and
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by stamping on them an insigniathat conferred their worth to
even the most illiterate person,the kings of Lydia
exponentially expanded thepossibilities of trade into and
out of Lydia.
So therefore one did not needto be able to work a scale, or
even own or possess a scale tobuy anything in the market.
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As a result, commerce wasallowed to proceed much more
rapidly and honestly, but moreimportantly, this would have
served as a model for virtuallyall the subsequent coinage
everywhere.
The makeup of the coins wereinitially made from electron, as
I said before, an alloy ofapproximately 55% gold and 45%
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silver and a tiny amount ofcopper.
The copper additives were thereto give the coin more
durability.
What other states realized wastheir coins were portable, hard
to counterfeit and had some kindof value, whether inherently or
by decree established by thegovernment.
For trade, and as we'vediscussed in the past, precious
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metals of gold and silver hadlong been used as currencies
before the first coins camealong into being.
Prior to coinage, the preciousmetals could either be in the
form of rings or ingots, which,with ingots, I should have
clarified earlier, it'sbasically just bars, but they
were universally used by alltraders across the ancient world
(20:59):
.
With standardized weights,coins eliminated this
time-consuming and annoyingproblem of weighing and
verifying their content, makingthem quickly become a
universally accepted means oftrade.
Like all other ancient coinsthat came after it, including
the shekels, for example, thecoins represented units of
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weight rather than a specificmonetary value.
If you look at the word stator,it meant that which balances
scales.
In ancient Greece, our modernEnglish word for money comes
from the Latin word of moneri,which means informing or to
announce the value of a metalweight of a coin.
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Eventually, our modern versionof the word coin will come from
the French, when they use theword to describe a die stamping
the coin, and the word bank willbe derived from the word bench,
because the money changers inmedieval Italy sat on benches
when performing their bankingoperations.
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And, as I mentioned prior,essentially military campaigns
were almost always governed byplunder.
From the early days of Sumer,you couldn't really necessarily
pay a standing army with certainkind of coins, because coins
didn't exist, but any kind ofmetals or anything like that,
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because a lot of times youdidn't really have them or you
didn't have enough food to payfor the standing army.
So you incentivize your army byplunder, right.
So the typical army forthousands of years would rely
upon plunder to basically feedthemselves and make enough money
(22:50):
that they can send back homeand live off of.
Now the problem with plunderand looting to pay soldiers is
it sounds well and good becauseyou don't really have to take
the risk of paying for them.
But then the problem is afteryou plunder and take over a
(23:10):
region, you must govern citiesand towns that were essentially
destroyed.
So now you're governing over adestroyed area, which means that
your tax resources would havealso been destroyed.
So in the end, using coins topay soldiers is a much more
(23:31):
practical way to compensatesoldiers rather than having them
constantly destroying citiesand killing many inhabitants in
the place that you need togovern going forward, many
inhabitants in the place thatyou need to govern going forward
.
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So, even though paying forsoldiers through coin is a much
easier and better way,ultimately as far as governing
goes, there was one littleproblem with the original
Electronian coins, with theoriginal electron-lidium coins.
Now, bear in mind, every coinshould have a face value higher
than the original cost ofproduction.
This concept of productionversus face value is known as
(24:16):
seniorage, which meansgovernments literally are able
to make money by creating money.
There is, however, a moderncase that goes against this
concept, as the one cent nowcosts nearly two cents to mint
and the US produces billions ofthem every year at a very
significant financial loss.
So this is, in part, a bigreason why you often hear people
(24:41):
say we should get rid of thepenny from circulation.
Now, getting back to Lydia, theLydian government generally
assessed the face value of thecoins at a little more than
their underlying value of theweight in metals in the coins.
Therefore, the local andforeign markets would have
(25:02):
traded coins that were in fact,overvalued in comparison to the
underlying weights.
Therefore, the government wasable to generate a profitable
spread between the underlyingingots and the accepted value of
the coins.
To appease this controversy,the Lydians struck the coins
with religious symbols tofurther induce their usage,
(25:25):
because now you are payingtribute to the gods.
So it appears that Lydia wasthe first state to circulate
coins.
Now, bear in mind, india andChina also developed coins
independently of Lydia.
However, most historiansbelieve Lydia had minted coins
(25:46):
first.
So you might hear people saythat actually China invented it
first or India invented it first.
It's quite possible that theydid, but all signs seem to point
to the fact that Lydia wasactually first.
So initially, as technologyimproved in the 7th century BCE,
(26:09):
the merchants were alreadyproficient at weighing tiny
objects such as coins.
Proficient at weighing tinyobjects such as coins.
Therefore, the merchants couldeasily detect if there was a
discrepancy between theunderlying weights of the
electron coins and the facevalue of the coins.
Since they were obligated toaccept the face value, it wasn't
(26:29):
uncommon for merchants to lookto the black market to try and
reduce the spread by tradingthese coins in the black market.
And when I say black market.
What I mean by this is thattraders would hide their goods
and then sell the goods underthe table for pure silver or
coins valued at their higherweights, not their legal face
(26:50):
value.
So in other words, coins wereabsolutely used in the
underground economy by the 7thcentury BCE.
The first Greek coins appearedin Aegina around 600 BCE.
It should be noted that coinagein Greece wasn't really fully
accepted on the mainland untilAlexander moved into Anatolia.
(27:13):
On the mainland, untilAlexander moved into Anatolia,
however, the rise of localIonian cornage meant competition
for the Lydians, especially dueto the fact that they were
using pure silver, meaning thepeople accepted the coins knew
precisely the makeup of themetals, unlike the electron
coins.
So in foreign trade Lady andKings couldn't really benefit
(27:36):
from the full value of theElectrum coins.
So in other words, they wouldhave had to take a negative
spread once the Electrum coinsreached another kingdom.
Therefore the foreign merchantsunderestimated the unknowable
gold content of the electrum.
Coins with an inconsistent paleyellow color of electrum were
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typically downgraded as silverby neglecting the gold portion
in the alloy.
Merchants instead weighed theLydian coins and compared their
value to Greek silver coins orfined silver ounces.
Before I move further.
(28:23):
Coins really ended up providinghistorians some color as to the
local histories of certainkingdoms.
So, for example, coins gives uschronologies of ancient kings,
which is somewhat obvious, butit also gives us an idea about
the hierarchy of local deitiesand the ideologies of ancient
(28:45):
republics.
This ultimately led to a wholenew field of study, known as
numismatics, which is devoted tothe study of coins, which in
reality, is amongst the mostproductive fields in historical
research.
To be honest, to give you anidea where we are in the
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historical timeline, this isafter the fall of the Assyrians,
babylon once again became thedominant city-state in
Mesopotamia.
The Medes had controlled thearea now known as Iran.
In 605 BCE, nebuchadnezzar IItook control of the Babylonian
Empire and during his 40-yearreign, the one thing he is
(29:30):
probably most known for is hishandling of Judah.
This was caused because, in 600BCE, the king of Judah made a
decision not to pay tribute toNebuchadnezzar.
In 598 BCE, the Babylonian armymarched into Jerusalem, the
capital of Judah and thecultural center of the Jewish
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people.
Long story short, the battlelasted about three months and
resulted in the exiles of theJewish people.
So that is where we are in ourtimeline Now the early Lydian
kingdoms had relative peace withits neighbors, but the peace
didn't last forever, as theLydians and the Medes had
(30:14):
engaged in a war that dragged onfor six long years.
Around 585 BCE, during a battlebetween the Medes and the
Lydians, they turned into night.
This pretty much freaked outboth sides, as they came to
believe that it was a sign fromthe gods, they immediately threw
(30:35):
down their weapons andreconciled their differences and
peace was established.
Now there's some controversyregarding this eclipse.
As it was told by Herodotus,some modern scholars think it
wasn't a solar eclipse but alunar eclipse, right before the
moon rise at dusk on eitherSeptember 3rd 609 BCE or July
(30:57):
4th 585 BCE.
But either way, the eclipseappears to have happened and
peace was established shortlythereafter.
Like I said, prior, eliades hadbecome the king of Lydia around
610 BCE, but it was his son,cretaceous, who would be the
(31:18):
centerpiece of this particularepisode when he became the king
around 560 BCE.
The next great leap forward incoinage came under the reign of
Cretaceous, who ruled Lydia fromabout 560 to 546 BCE.
You may or may not be familiarwith the name, but you may be
(31:41):
familiar with the expressionRichest Cretaceous, as he was
known to be the world's richestman.
Cretaceous cut his teeth inpolitics as he served as a
viceroy under his father,eliades.
He served as a viceroy underhis father Eliades.
It's quite possible that thisexperience helped him understand
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how the political economy,especially with regards to the
ease and efficiency that coinagebrought to it, along with
international and local trade.
As such, croesus was the onewho probably stretched the
kingdom to its farthest, as hehad conquered the Ionian Greeks
along the west coast of Anatolia, and then he had pushed his
(32:23):
border all the way out eastuntil he was neighboring Persia.
Now I should make it clear that, despite the fact that he was
overseeing the Ionian Greeks, hestill maintained a good
relation with the Greeks.
But I didn't really want totalk about Croesus' ability to
increase his land and holdings,because that's really not the
(32:46):
main point of this episode.
About 10 years into his reign,around 550 BCE, lydian
metallurgy advanced to the pointthat they had developed a way
of separating gold and silverout of the electrum in a long
chemical process in a furnace.
As such, it appears that he was, in fact, the first Lydian king
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to issue separate gold andseparate silver coins.
From then on, his royal seal onthe coin certified a fine
silver or gold medal.
Afterward, the foreignmerchants began to accept the
coins on its face value, withoutany sort of discount to its
face value.
Each silver or gold coin had aprecise value and weight,
(33:32):
specified by law.
In addition, the Lydian kingfixed the values of gold versus
silver, as an ounce of gold hada stronger value than an ounce
of silver.
So therefore one gold weightwas worth 10 silver weights.
In effect, the Lydianspracticed bimetallism, whereas
(33:55):
the government circulated bothsilver and gold coins separately
.
The king therefore had to havea good understanding of the
aggregate supply and demand foreach of the metals as to make
sure he kept a proper balancebetween circulating the proper
amounts of gold versus silvercoins.
(34:15):
Now, since the Lydian king hadincreased the circulation and
had a monopoly over theproduction of coinage, he was
able to enforce strictcompliance of the coins.
In fact, the early coins wouldlater be known by historians as
the Crescids, named afterCretaceous.
With that being said, herealized that increasing the
(34:39):
circulation of gold and silvercoins would bring tremendous
wealth to the kingdom, but alsoit would mean that the Lydian
king would also increase itssphere of influence
internationally, especially withhis trading partners, its
sphere of influenceinternationally, especially with
its trading partners.
(34:59):
So he might be the mostimportant historical figure when
it comes to internationalmonetary policy, and thus the
unintended consequence would behe expanded international trade,
forever going forward.
This all led to his legendarywealth, as in the name Riches
Croesus, which at the time, Ithink it would be safe to say
(35:20):
that he was, in fact, therichest man in the world.
Now, as a reminder, croesus didnot invent coins.
In reality, it was probablyinvented by his father, who
invented the first electrumcoins.
But, like I said, duringCretaceous's reign they were
able to separate the electruminto pure gold and silver.
(35:42):
Now, like I said, this meansthat they were going to be
operating on a bimetal system.
So the fact that they were ableto operate on a bimetal system
meant that trade would becomemuch more efficient in Lydia,
and this would have essentiallysolidified Sardis as the
(36:03):
preeminent cosmopolitan city inthe known world at the time,
because, ultimately, tradersfrom far and wide would find
that selling goods in Sardismeans that you would be able to
get an accurate amount of goldor silver in the transaction and
, more importantly, they hadgold and silver.
This access to gold and silveris the important part, because
(36:27):
that will be a problem,especially in Europe when we get
around the beginnings of theRenaissance period, because they
just didn't have any gold orsilver in Europe.
It just wasn't in circulation.
People were hoarding it, sotrade was restricted
dramatically in medieval Europebecause of that.
So with an increased moneysupply, this would mean that
(36:52):
people would naturally flock toSardis because ultimately people
generally will flock to placesthat have money.
Now I want to be clear.
I don't want you to think ofthis time and location like a
modern liquid market where coinsor money is overflowing in the
marketplaces.
In reality, lydia would have aproblem that so many others
(37:18):
afterward would have whenthey're using metal coins.
This problem will be verypronounced.
Like I said, in medieval Europethis continued for centuries, in
that they just like the peoplein medieval Europe when we get
to it, what they would do is theLydians tended to hoard coins
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when they first came intocirculation.
So just to be clear, it wasn'tlike they just developed gold
and silver coins and within ashort time period everyday
citizens were using them.
In fact, coinage was initiallymore used by traders who had
bought and sold goods on awholesale level because,
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shockingly, these coins did nottrickle down to the middle class
all that quickly.
Ultimately, these coins weregenerally too expensive to pay
for general labor and theyweren't practical for retail
transactions.
However, herodotus seems toindicate that one of the reasons
(38:24):
why the Lydians in particularhad developed coinage was due to
the fact that they werewholesale providers and they
also had a vast amount of retailbusinesses.
To encourage coinage and a moreretail and everyday use, the
Lydians also developed coppercoins for smaller transactions,
(38:48):
but even these smaller coinsweren't really necessarily used
by ordinary citizens.
So, with that being said, theIllydian kings decided to take
things a step further with theirgold and silver coins.
As they had figured trade wouldbe even more efficient with
even smaller denominations.
(39:09):
So what they did was segmentthe coins into seven different
weights, of which they wouldstrike even more coins, all the
way down to one 192nd of astator, which meant that it
weighed less than a tenth of agram, which would have equaled
(39:32):
to about 0.004 ounces, whichwould have equaled to about
0.004 ounces.
So what this means is thatpayments could now theoretically
be accepted in large and evensmall payments, and this would
have allowed for change to bemade if someone only had larger
(39:55):
denominations of coins.
Since Cretius was concerned withspreading his sphere of
influence, it appears thatCretaceous made a conscious
effort to ensure that mintedcoins could be used outside the
Lydian borders with auniversally accepted value.
This notion helped contributeto the expansion of the Lenin
Empire, especially by the timeCretaceous took power.
(40:17):
Once he came to the throne ofLydia, he had secured allies
with the Medes, sparta, egyptand Babylon, so this meant that
he was in a pretty secure spotWith his wealth.
Cretaceous was credited withthe construction of the Temple
(40:37):
of Artemis, which was one of theseven wonders of the world.
Like I mentioned prior, therewas a ton of crossover between
the Lydian and the Greek culture, especially with the
worshipping of the same gods, asit was clearly seen on their
coinage.
(40:58):
The thing is, whenever certaingroups of people become
extremely wealthy, it's almostcertain that other groups of
people won't speak highly ofthem, or they would have created
some kind of negativestereotypes about them.
We certainly see this in moderntimes with certain ethnic or
religious groups, and it was nodifferent with the ancients.
(41:21):
Certain ethnic or religiousgroups, and it was no different
with the ancients.
Herodotus called the Lydians anation of merchants or sellers,
but this was kind of a dogwhistle feel to it, as it was
known to be a negative undertone, because they were basically
calling them hucksters or modernsnake oil salesmen or whatever
(41:43):
you want to use.
He inferred that moneyultimately became very important
in their society.
Basically, the same thing wassaid about the Phoenicians as
well.
According to Herodotus, girlsfrom the lower classes were
forced to go into prostitutionas soon as they were mature
enough in order to save enoughfor their own dowry so they can
(42:05):
eventually get married.
In addition, it sounds likegambling may have developed into
a relatively small problem aswell, which kind of makes sense.
If you have extra money,there's a good chance you might
gamble it away because you havesomething and you're just trying
to create more and other peopleare buying things and creating
(42:25):
things and you just want to keepup with the Joneses.
And gambling is ultimatelyprobably viewed as a get rich
kind of scheme that I could seeeasily be employed in a place
like Lydia, when money isoverflowing and people becoming
very wealthy.
And it's also probably worthnoting something you probably
(42:52):
already know Gold has relativelyfew practical purposes outside
of decoration and somesophisticated modern
technological applications, sotherefore it lacked utility,
even more so in the ancientsocieties.
However, unlike copper, whichturns green, iron, which rusts
and silver, which tarnishes,pure gold remains pure and
(43:16):
unchanged.
Another thing with regards tocirculation it probably wasn't
like coins just showed up oneday and everybody was like, okay
, it has a unique stamp on it,so it should be okay to use.
Instead, it's more likely thatthe use of coins probably had a
slow burn at first before itreally took off in Lydia really
(43:46):
took off in Lydia.
Some tend to think that coinagewas really boosted when Greek
mercenary soldiers begandemanding coinage as payment for
their services, since coinscould easily be stored for
future use.
Now I'm kind of getting aheadof myself, but if you look at
the Persian empire, coinage wasslow to adapt because they
primarily used coins in placesthat mercenary soldiers required
(44:06):
coin as payment.
If it wasn't for them, it'squite possible that coinage
would almost not have beencirculated at all in the Persian
Empire.
As coinage evolved more andmore, the coins themselves would
get stamped on both sides tocommunicate more information to
the public.
The one thing that wasn'tstamped on the coins was
(44:28):
numerical dates, for obviousreasons and, of course, with
coinage developing and gettingmore sophisticated and more
widespread in use.
It was the capital city ofSardis that probably benefited
the most from all thesedevelopments.
The Lydian capital of Sardisappears to have been divided
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between the rich and the poor,whereas the rich, including the
king, lived in the upper part ofthe city, while the poor
resided in the lower part of thecity, which wasn't protected by
a wall, which ultimately letthem be vulnerable to outside
invaders.
Now, since Sardis developedinto a wealthy city that had
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access to gold and silver andhad prosperous trade routes
coming to and from the city, itappears that it may have been
the first ever to have permanentretail stores.
Now, I presume that they wouldhave been in the upper part of
the city that was protected bythe walls and near the wealthy.
(45:34):
Therefore, the most affluentpeople in the city would have
had easy access to internationalgoods and, because of this, the
city would have attractedpeople from far and wide,
including, obviously, the Greeks, but also people from
Mesopotamia, meaning that Sardiswould have been one of the
earliest, if not the earliest,cosmopolitan city.
(45:56):
And because of this, sardiswould be a melting pot which
attracted intellectuals and newideas from far and wide.
Now, with regards to trade, theLydians granted special
statuses to merchants, termingthem the people of the market.
As such, they enjoyed a higherstatus than commoners in the
(46:22):
social realm.
As great as the concept ofcoinage was, it appears that the
coins were likely hoarded bythe kings and the upper classes.
Thus, elite families developedover time.
Now, with the ever-increasingusage and circulation of coinage
within Lydia and its tradepartners, wealth was flowing
(46:45):
more and more into Lydia.
As a result, wealthy familieswere becoming mainstay in the
kingdom.
However, it appears that manyof the elite families in Lydia
were really bad at managingtheir money, as many had
completely squandered theirwealth.
It appears that they couldn'tcontrol themselves when it came
(47:06):
to luxury goods.
In part, it was probablybecause the elites became mired
in an escalating game ofone-upsmanship.
In other words, they engaged inserious cases of conspicuous
consumption to show theirneighbors that they were
economically superior, whetherit's the bigger house or
(47:28):
building a larger tomb.
This sounds very modern, by theway.
This is something we see allthe time.
So, therefore, the elites endedup destroying the wealth that
their ancestors had accumulated.
The elites of Sardis used theirnew wealth for conspicuous
consumption instead of investingfor long-term growth of their
(47:51):
assets, cretaceous being chiefamong them, as he did with so
many other kings the day beforehim, as he poured his wealth
into vanity projects, especiallybuildings and mercenary
soldiers.
Now, with regards to the tombsin Lydia, the Lydians sort of
had an Egyptian feel to them, inthat the elites of Lydia were
(48:15):
often buried with extremelyvaluable items which would
ultimately give historians a lotof valuable information
regarding the society they livedin at the time.
However, lydia, just like Egypt, had experienced a lot of grave
robberies over the years and,as a result, so much of the
history was plundered andsmuggled outside of Turkey.
(48:38):
However, you can still see alot of these items in various
museums around the world to thisday.
So not as all lost, but I wouldimagine a lot of people in
Turkey feel that they have beenlooted of their culture, but
luckily, many have been returnedover the years, where they were
(48:58):
placed in the care of Ankara'sMuseum of Anatolian
Civilizations.
So, while theft of burial tombsbecame a problem after the fact,
another issue that wasbeginning to creep into society
and would be a problem forliterally the next 2,000 years
(49:19):
was the fact that the coinswould often be worth more than
the metal itself.
Much of this was due tocounterfeiters, who often used
methods to swindle recipients byreplacing the original metal
content with something else.
One of the methods that wasused was an alloy, which was a
(49:41):
mixture of metals that resembledthe original metal.
The trick is to make the coinwith another cheap metal and
then cover it with the preciousmetal so that the visible part
of the coin looked perfect.
Another way to commit this formof fraud was through coin
(50:02):
debasements, which involvesremoving some of the metal from
the coin in the most subtle waypossible.
This can be done by scrapingthe outer parts of the coin in
the act of shaving off a smallportion of the precious metal
(50:24):
portion of the precious metal.
Over time, the precious metalclippings would be saved up and
melted into bullion or used tomake new coins.
So while coinage was makingLydia wealthy, it did cause some
unintended consequences.
In part, it may have ledCretaceous to think his kingdom
was invincible.
Now it is important to notewhat was going on in the world
(50:46):
at the time.
In Iran, the Persians, underthe rule of Cyrus the Great, had
taken control of Iran whenCyrus had overthrown the Median
Empire, which was run byAstyages, the king of the Medes
and Cyrus' grandfather, in 550BCE.
Around 547 BCE, cyrus the Greathad been making certain
(51:08):
assertions and arrangements withthe Ionian Greeks behind
Cretaceous' back.
It's quite possible that Cyruswas initially using the Ionian
Greeks to provoke Cretaceous and, more more importantly, to
destabilize Lydia.
Now Cretaceous whether he waslooking to provoke the Persians
(51:29):
or not led his troops intocentral and eastern Anatolia to
capture the city of Tyria and,in the process, began selling
its citizens into slaveryprocess began selling its
citizens into slavery.
Well, that provocation wasn'tgoing to work for Cyrus or the
Persians and, as a result, itgave him an excuse to expand his
(51:52):
empire even further intoAnatolia.
So his army of Persians andMedes marched to Cappadocia.
As such of Persians and Medesmarched to Cappadocia, as such,
cretaceous received word thatthe Persians were going to
attack his kingdom.
In response to this action bythe Persians, he consulted the
Oracle of Delphi, who prophesiedthat Cretaceous would destroy a
(52:15):
great empire if he went to war.
What does that mean?
I don't even know.
Does he mean, is it thePersians or the Lydians?
Who really knows?
I mean, it's pretty vague andnot very clear.
But also, too, this seems likeone of those kind of reoccurring
stories that you hearthroughout history, that
so-and-so goes to meet withso-and-so, and in the process a
(52:38):
vague response is given thatcould mean either their kingdom
is killed or the other kingdomis killed off.
It's kind of a recurring thingthat you kind of hear, you know,
every once in a while, and thisis just another case of it.
So, by all accounts, the Lydiansheld their own at first, and
(52:59):
their first battles wereessentially a draw, but the
winter was approaching, and thattypically meant that
campaigning season was basicallyover.
As such, cretaceous expectedCyrus to head home back to
Persia for the winter, so hewithdrew his troops from Sardis
and sent word to his allies tobe ready in the spring, and
(53:22):
really not immediately.
However, cyrus didn't retirefor the winter.
He surprised Cretaceous bychasing him back to Sardis.
But either way, cretaceousstill had a much bigger army of
approximately 420,000 mencompared to Cyrus' 196,000
(53:42):
soldiers.
When Cyrus caught back up, whathe did was a bit of
psychological warfare by puttingregular camels in the front.
Now, you might not think muchof this to yourself.
You know camels up front.
Why does that matter?
Well, the reason why this hadan impact was that the Lydian
(54:03):
horses had never seen them andwere terrified by their size and
smell.
They could not be controlledand basically fled the
battlefield.
So this one single actdecimated the Lydian cavalry.
Cyrus eventually capturedCroesus and it sounds like Cyrus
(54:23):
was really mad and wanted toexecute Croesus on a giant
bonfire.
But apparently the gods hadstepped in and a rainstorm
doused the funeral pyre andCroesus was saved.
And apparently, after he wassaved by the gods, croesus had
said to Cyrus you should stopyour soldiers from burning and
(54:43):
looting Sardis.
Cyrus said why?
And Cretaceous replied becauseyou have defeated me, the city
belongs to you.
Why let your men destroy it?
Cyrus thought about it andagreed and spared his life.
And on top of that, becausethis is Cyrus the Great, he
decided to give Cretaceous a jobas an advisor to him.
(55:05):
Now you're going to probablythink I'm a little bit nuts, but
for some reason, when I readthese stories, especially this
story, the one thing that seemsto pop in my head when I read
this initially was when inScarface.
When in Scarface, when TonyMontana killed his former boss,
(55:28):
frank and decided to spare Erniehis life and gave him a job.
So Ernie thought he was goingto get killed by Tony Montana
and he said hey, you want a job.
So he drinks the alcohol andhe's shaking because he's so
scared, but for some reason thatjust plays in my head when I
read this story, and I know it'skind of silly, but it's just
the way my mind works.
Anyway, getting back to thestory from a military strategic
(55:49):
location, lydia was a bufferzone for Ionian Greek
city-states on the Aegean Sea.
Now, I don't think I'vementioned it or not, but nearly
half the Greeks lived outside oftoday's Greece mainland.
They stayed connected to themotherland through trade and
culture, but they hadindependent governments.
(56:12):
Cyrus' general was advising himto keep marching west and
conquer Ionian Greek city-states.
To keep marching west andconquer Ionian Greek city-states
.
Now, this was truly shocking tothe other Greek city-states on
the mainland, as they hadunderstood that they had a
potential powerful enemy righton their doorstep.
(56:34):
Despite the defeats, not a lothad changed, as the Ionians
maintained their ability to rulethemselves if they paid their
tribute and sent men to fight inthe Persian military.
However, the Ionians wouldoccasionally rebel against their
Persian overlords, of which amajor rebellion happened around
(56:56):
500 BCE, of which theretaliation was swift and severe
, as the Persian army burntSardis to the ground to send a
message.
However, the city was rebuiltsoon afterward, but the message
was delivered Incredibly.
Even after Lydia was ruled bythe Persians, the Cretaceous
(57:17):
coinage remained in use forquite a long time afterward.
So many Lydian gold or silverstaters dating after the fall of
Cretaceous have been around forover centuries that many
historians believe the newPersian rulers of Anatolia
continued to use the same coindyes at the Sardis Mint for some
(57:40):
many years afterward.
In 334 BCE, sardis was taken byAlexander the Great.
When the Romans took control ofthe region around 133 BCE, they
made Lydia an administrativedistrict, as it still held
tremendous value to whoever heldthe region.
Tremendous value to whoeverheld the region For as long as
(58:03):
standing armies were created.
We're talking back as far aseven Sargon and his enormous
standing army of over 6,000soldiers.
The biggest problem was how doyou provision the army?
For the longest time, kingsjust did not have the resources
readily available to pay theirarmies, and when I say pay, that
(58:25):
can mean a whole many differentthings, whether it's providing
some sort of lodging orproviding meals, or even
providing certain necessitiesthat would make life much easier
, such as paying in salt.
So, to overcome this lack ofresources to pay soldiers, one
of the biggest motivations wasthe fact that the king would
(58:46):
allow his soldiers anopportunity to plunder and
conquer the villages and townsand cities.
In order to make the plunderworth their while, they needed
to have things that they couldtake back to be valuable or,
even more importantly, portable.
As such, precious metals andprecious stones would have been
(59:08):
the most ideal items to plunder,as you can get your biggest
bang for your buck due to thevalue to size ratio.
Therefore, it wasn't uncommonfor individuals to come into
wealth through theft and plunder.
(59:29):
So I always remember thinking tomyself why would these soldiers
, officers and governmentofficials be okay participating
in these long, protracted wars?
Why didn't they just lose theirnerve or just get frustrated
and go AWOL in large numbers?
Why did they stick around andsee it through, even though it
could be years or decades?
Well, the reason is, war couldprovide you with life-changing
(59:54):
wealth, along with the glorythat you may be seeking Now.
The fact is, when individualscome into a great deal of wealth
in a relatively short amount oftime, they are going to look to
spend it and therefore thereare going to be people who are
looking to sell their goods andservices and, as a result, you
(01:00:16):
end up with newer and largermarketplaces.
Not all these marketplaces wereon the up and up because, just
like in modern times, whenpeople come into a lot of wealth
doing unsavory things, you'llhave large black markets pop up.
So you can see how, even as faras back in these ancient
civilizations, war oftenstimulated economies, whether it
(01:00:40):
was above or below board.
Like I said, it wasn't justabout plundering money, but it
was also about glory.
Now I realize glory is probablyan idea that may or may not
resonate with the modernthinking the way it resonated
with ancient societies, but warwas constant in ancient
societies, ancient societies.
(01:01:03):
But war was constant in ancientsocieties and it may have been
the fact that, yes, glory playeda major part in that.
But it's quite possible thatthese constant states of warfare
were pushed forward as animpetus for developing trade,
especially when trade involvedprecious metals and stones,
particularly when they aresmaller in size and more
(01:01:25):
portable and easily broken downinto smaller amounts.
So, in the end, warring withplaces like Lydia was a gamble
that the soldiers on either sidecould end up with significant
amounts of precious metals,which then meant marketplaces
were bound to spring up withinclose proximity of these
(01:01:46):
soldiers.
In other words, war hadstimulative economic effects,
just like you hear in modernparlance that war is great for
the economy.
Well, until it isn't so, theLydians started using coins that
developed and then, within arelatively short time period,
(01:02:07):
maybe within 80 years or so, theGreeks also started using
coinage.
And it may be just one of thosecrazy, weird coincidences, but
the Greeks developed a phalanxtactic right around the same
time that they had adoptedcoinage.
So maybe it was a thing thatthe Greeks had realized that
they better be superior on thebattlefield because now they had
(01:02:31):
an even bigger incentive atplunder, and therefore the
Greeks almost became obsessivewith drilling and training its
hoplite soldiers, because maybethey realized that they're going
to have to defend their growingwealth.
But also, whenever theyplundered a foreign kingdom, the
(01:02:53):
raw materials brought back intothe Greek city-states could be
broken down into some sort ofcoinage and therefore, by
increasing coinage to thegovernment, they were able to
increase its capacity for trade,increase its economies of scale
when producing weaponry andtools and also be able to afford
mercenary soldiers to feed thegrowing military-industrial
(01:03:13):
complex, which was an investmentto bring back more raw
materials to create more coinageto increase its army and navy.
And you can say that thisultimately got its start with
the Lydians.
Now that these governments hadtheir own coins, they were able
to implement rules that theircoins would be accepted wherever
(01:03:36):
they collected taxes or imposedany kind of fees or fines.
Thus, what they were doing isestablishing uniform national
markets for trade.
Now I want to be clear that themarkets were originally more or
less a side effect ofgovernment systems when they
first started to appear inplaces like Sumer.
Now you can see that placeslike Lydia and then later the
(01:04:01):
Greeks, the marketplaces becameincreasingly entangled with the
military-industrial complex.
So, going forward from theLydians, what we really see is
whenever there's an increase inmilitary activity, there will
also be an increase in the usageand production of coinage,
along with other things such asslavery.
(01:04:23):
So therefore, the naturalprogression would be people
would become more materialisticin nature.
So we see more conspicuousconsumption as a result of
military action and plunder.
And I want to make sure that I'mclear, because I mentioned
(01:04:43):
conspicuous consumption prior.
What that really means ispeople who are purposely going
out and buying goods just sothey can show off to their
neighbors.
I remember seeing an articlepublished by the guys at
Freakonomics Radio where theybasically said that, despite the
fact that there were severaltypes of hybrid cars in the
(01:05:06):
marketplace, the Toyota Priusfar outsold other hybrid car
sales, despite the fact that thePrius had essentially similar
miles per gallon ratings.
And the reason why the Priussold in much higher numbers is
because the people wanted othersto know that they were in fact
(01:05:29):
driving hybrid, because thePrius had a unique look and you
can easily identify it as ahybrid vehicle versus another
car model that was identical toits non-hybrid design.
So that form of conspicuousconsumption is a lot more subtle
than just seeing who could goout and buy the largest house or
(01:05:51):
build the largest tomb.
But either way, more wealthwill almost always increase
conspicuous consumption, evenwhen people will say that they
will never show off their wealthor show that they got an
increase in their salaries.
So what I'm getting at ismaterialism really takes a great
(01:06:12):
leap forward with the advent ofcoinage.
Coins would eventually carry asea power message across the
trading world from the ancientGreek city-states to Imperial
Britain, and then, as coinagebecomes more widely circulated,
you start to see the idea ofpure greed being put on steroids
(01:06:33):
.
Now, when we get to theclassical Greek city-states, you
start to really see a pushbackagainst the monetization and the
idea of coinage and bankingbeing something less desirable
as compared to landowning andfarming.
But the fact is, whether peoplepush back against it or not,
(01:06:55):
the Lydians planted the seedsfor the modern economies to
develop and thrive for the next2,500 years, for the modern
economies to develop and thrivefor the next 2,500 years.
I want to thank you for takingthe time to listen to these two
parts on ancient Anatolia.
Now I want to be clear I reallyliked doing these episodes,
(01:07:19):
these two episodes in particular, because this was kind of
really what I was kind oflooking to do when I first
started this podcast.
I really wanted to discussbanking, especially in the
United States.
But you know, as I kind of wentback further and further into
the development of money, youkind of really went all the way
back actually to Sumer, reallywhen money really first started.
(01:07:40):
But then, when you look atcoinage, it was really the
Lydians who really helpedkickstart the idea of using
coins.
I mean, we do know that theChinese and the Indians played a
major part in this as well, butI think it was someone like
Cretaceous who became worldfamous and was really the first
(01:08:04):
ever kind of mega superstar whenit comes to wealth.
But, more importantly, I thinkyou can kind of really see
credit for basically everythingwhen it comes to ancient
societies and developments.
Kind of really push asideplaces like Lydia and we push
(01:08:40):
aside ancient China and ancientIndia, but all these ancient
societies played their part increating the modern
international economies thatkind of really feed off of each
other and we need quite honestly.
So.
I hope you really enjoyed theseepisodes and I look forward to
(01:09:01):
discussing more in the nearfuture.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
Also, you can help out the showa ton by leaving a five-star
(01:09:23):
review and telling a friendabout it.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D, and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
(00:24):
entertaining.
Now, I'm not a historian but,like Dan Conlon likes to say, I
am a fan of history.
We last left off with the riseand fall of the Hattians, the
Hittites and the Phrygians, justto name a few.
We also discussed somemythological stories that you
(00:45):
may be familiar with that hadtheir origins in ancient Turkey.
But, most importantly, wetalked about how the many
kingdoms that had risen and fellup to this point ultimately
played a major part in thedevelopment and trade in and out
of Anatolia.
(01:12):
The Greeks arrived in westernAnatolia sometime after the late
Bronze Age collapse and thecolonization of Ionia, which was
an area located on the westerncoast of Anatolia.
Due to its location on thecoast and the fact that they
were already accustomed to thesea, the Ionian Greeks quickly
became experienced sea traders.
As such, they primarily tradedwith the Lydians, the Egyptians
(01:34):
and even the various city-statesin and around the Italian
peninsula.
This extensive trade ensuredthat the Ionians would become
one of the wealthiestcivilizations, and they used
this wealth to set up theirtrading settlements around the
Black Sea area as well.
Once the city of Sardis fell,the Ionian city of Miletus
(01:57):
replaced Sardis as the hub oftrade and scholarship.
Like I was alluding topreviously, sardis was a
cosmopolitan city, so therefore,some of the great minds of
Babylonia, egypt, lydia andvarious Phoenician city-states
made their way there, and theywere able to share much of their
(02:18):
scholarly research.
This research included ideasrelated to the sciences along
with navigation geography.
Research included ideas relatedto the sciences along with
navigation, geography, trade andcommerce.
In addition, the elites ofSardis, as well as Miletus,
became some of the biggestcollectors of art and other
crafts, which meant that theartisans from all over the known
(02:38):
world at the time would havemade their way to Western
Anatolia to make and producetheir various works of art and
other finished goods, for thatmatter.
In fact, to show you how Greekreligion influenced the Lydia
religion, aliades and Cretaceoushired Ionian craftsmen to
create offerings to the godApollo at Delphi.
As a result, this would havebeen a great example of how the
(03:03):
Ionian Greek economy benefiteddirectly from the sharing of
cultural ideas and, moreimportantly, lydian wealth.
Since the Ionians and theLydians maintained a close
working relationship, they wereable to use each other as a
source of knowledge to maketrade more efficient.
Then this efficiency wouldactually go up a notch when the
(03:25):
Lydians had developed their owncoinage, which they would have
introduced to the rest ofAnatolia and then the Greeks
would have quickly adopted.
So I want to be clear the firstpart of the Anatolian episode
was set up to lead into thisparticular episode, because I
(03:46):
wanted you to get a broadbackground of Anatolia before I
got into talking about Lydia.
In reality, I was originallyonly going to speak about the
Lydians, but I kind of figuredit would make more sense to have
some understanding of Anatoliaas a whole before I got into
Lydia.
Now, I suspect that the averageperson has never heard of Lydia
(04:12):
and probably knows almostnothing about Lydian culture,
even though they were probablythe ones that had maybe one of
their earliest and maybe biggestimpacts on the development of
modern economies and trade.
The fact is, the Kingdom ofLydia isn't a well-known ancient
(04:33):
kingdom.
Lydia was located on thewestern edge of Anatolia, which
says modern-day Turkey, andLydia was originally part of the
Hittite Empire before it fellin the late Bronze Age collapse.
In addition, the Greeksoccupied its Aegean shores as
early as the 13th century BCE,around the fall of the Hittite
(04:57):
Empire.
As such, you will see a lot ofcrossover between the Lydian
culture and the Ionian Greekculture, especially the religion
.
That's the biggest crossoverthat you'll see.
But the Lydians had their ownlanguage, which was derived from
Indo-European dialect.
While historians have figuredout ancient Lydian grammar,
(05:21):
there are some words that theydon't understand yet, so it's
kind of a work in progress.
At this point, lydia woulddevelop into a very influential
yet smallish city-state.
A lot of it probably comes backto the beginnings, because
initially it was run by peacefulfarmers who generally had good
(05:41):
relations with their neighbors.
I mean, it's kind of not unlikea lot of other ancient
societies as well.
Now, it's worth noting that,due to its location in western
Anatolia, that the Lydians andthe Greeks lived peacefully near
each other.
As a result, they ended upsharing a lot of cultural norms,
like I said earlier, includingmany religious belief systems.
(06:04):
They ended up sharing a lot ofcultural norms, like I said
earlier, including manyreligious belief systems,
including their religiousfigures.
In addition, greeks had a majorinfluence on the Lydians'
alphabetic writing systems,which the Phoenicians had first
developed.
This might be the reason whyHerodotus wrote extensively
about the Lydians.
The issue with discussing Lydiais the information isn't really
(06:25):
coming from first-hand accounts.
Instead, the information thatwe get is from the Greeks,
especially Herodotus, and, asmany of you know pretty well,
herodotus isn't exactly the bestsource of information because
he was prone to take some wildexaggerations at times.
In fact, herodotus states thatLydia was founded by Her some
(06:48):
wild exaggerations at times.
In fact, herodotus states thatLydia was founded by Hercules.
So there's that.
But Herodotus' stories weremeant to be spoken in public
forums, so taking liberties forentertainment was kind of part
of his deal.
So that's why many of hiswritings were a bit outrageous
at times.
So you got to understand thatthe writing.
(07:09):
So people can, you know, speakthese to people and you know you
want to have some kind ofoutrageous bits and parts
because you want to keep peopleengaged.
So if you're asking yourself whythe name Lydia, well, it is
believed that the regent got hisname from a first king who was
known as Lydas, of which hewould have founded the capital
(07:29):
of Sardis.
Now, the earliest history ofLydia is quite fascinating to me
because it's wrapped in myth,but the earliest stories are
great nonetheless.
Nonetheless, the earliest rootsof the kingdom are from a king
(07:49):
named Candolus, who was the lastking of the Heraclid dynasty,
and he would have ruled Lydiafrom Sardis in the 8th century
BCE.
Legend has it that Candolus hadan extremely beautiful wife.
As such, he instructed hisservant, named Yegas, to spy on
the queen while she was naked sothat he could see for himself
(08:10):
how beautiful she was.
However, that plan backfiredquickly because the queen
discovered Yegas spying on herand she was essentially
horrified when she learned whathad happened.
She insisted that Yigas killthe king to preserve her honor.
Yigas follows her advice, killsthe king and usurps the throne.
(08:32):
Now, according to the Greeks,they claimed that Yigas was a
tyrant, but the Oracle of Delphiwas said to have applauded Egas
because he was said to haveprevented a civil war when he
usurped the throne around 680BCE.
I mean that right there seemsvery interesting, if not a way,
(08:57):
for the king to promote positivePR for himself.
You know, use the highpriestess to put out the good
word that he had prevented abloodbath in the streets, so he
was doing it for the good of thepeople and not for himself.
So that's a pretty interestinglittle promotional stunt, but uh
, you know, that's that's whathe's going to do back in the day
.
So so from there, basically, anew line of kings was created,
(09:20):
as king Ardis rose to the throneafter his father, yigas, was
killed by the Sumerians.
Ardes mainly focused on militaryconquests, so one of his first
moves was to approach theAssyrian king Ashurbanipal with
tribute and form an allianceagainst the Sumerians.
In addition, he looked tosubdue Greek city-states to the
(09:44):
west.
By doing so, ardes attacked theIonian Greek city of Miletus
and succeeded in capturing thecity of Priene, after which
Priene would remain under directcontrol of the Lydian kingdom.
Miletus was a different story,as it was too powerful to
conquer and it had a strong armyto back it.
(10:06):
Instead of trying to subjugatethe Milesians, he allowed them
some kind of freedom, such asallowing them to build new
cities south of the Black Sea.
In return, miletus was forcedto pay tribute to Lydia.
This proved to be a pretty wisemove, because in the end, it
(10:29):
would have spared both sides acostly war in terms of money and
lives.
So in the end, he was able toexpand his borders and increase
Lydian wealth.
But unfortunately, ardes waskilled, likely when the
Sumerians invaded Lydia andsacked most of Sardis.
So really, what we're seeing isLydia is in a bit of turmoil
(10:54):
right now because of the outsideattacks that were coming into
the kingdom, but the kingdomwould have still survived
nonetheless.
Aliadis was the fourth king ofthe Myrna dynasty in Lydia.
He was the son of Sidiotes, whomay have died fighting the
Sumerians in 653 BCE.
He was therefore the grandsonof Ardes and the great-grandson
(11:20):
of Aegis.
He died after he reigned forabout 50 years, and then he was
succeeded by his son, cretaceous, who was probably the most
famous person from Lydia.
By the time Aliades got to thethrone, he had inherited a
couple wars.
The way he dealt with this washe would have formed an alliance
(11:43):
with the Scythians, of whichthey would have entered Anatolia
and defeated the Sumerians, sothey were no longer a threat.
However, the Scythians were nowa dominant player in central
Anatolia, but they would beexpelled by the Medes after the
destruction of the Neo-AssyrianEmpire.
So right now, aliades isprobably thinking nah, this is
(12:06):
great, I don't have to worryabout the Sumerians anymore.
But he now had another problem.
He had a mead problem Now withregards to the continued
conflict with the Alian Greeks.
Aliades probably viewed themdifferently, because he honored
many of their Greek gods.
Furthermore, he needed thegrain that Miletus had produced.
(12:30):
Therefore, you kind of put twoand two together and he decided
to make peace with Miletus,which led to a profitable
trading relationship, becauseMiletus had excess grains but
few metal resources sort of likethe people of Sumer and Akkad
While Lydia had plenty of thosemetals, but they didn't have
(12:53):
enough grain to feed hispopulation.
So, with the peace at hand tohis immediate west, he then
probably knew it was just amatter of time before he had to
deal with his growing meadproblem to the east.
But before I get there, I wantedto get into what made Lydia so
(13:13):
special.
The Lydian economy was, likemost of the ancient world,
initially built throughagriculture.
The ancient world initiallybuilt through agriculture, but
as populations grew anddivisions of labor took hold,
the Lydians were able to exploittheir abundance of natural
resources, of metals such asgold, silver, iron and zinc.
(13:36):
In addition, the Lydians wereknown for manufacturing elegant
fabrics and clothing, along withceramics.
Lydia, due to its location, wasalso heavily influenced by the
Mesopotamians to the east andsouth.
Because of this, trade had togo through Lydia if people from
(13:57):
the east and west were to trade.
Like I said, Lydia had hugereserves of silver and gold that
was easily mined.
With that being said, the kingsof Lydia mined the metals and
originally stamped their ingotswith their official government
seal so that traders couldeasily see the weight and where
(14:19):
the ingot had come from.
The kings then decided that itwould be a good idea to shrink
down the ingots to a smallersize, which meant that they were
easy to be made divisible fortrade efficiency.
No one is really sure whichking downsized the size and the
(14:41):
weight of the ingots into asmaller micro unit, but it may
have been done during the reignof King Eliades, who was in
power from 619 to 560 BCE, so hewas in power for quite a long
time.
These smaller ingots obviouslyhelped trade, but it also made
it easier to collect taxes.
This ultimately meant that theLydian kings could easily
(15:06):
redistribute these small ingotsmuch more efficiently.
Let us not forget,mesopotamians have used metal
money in the forms of metalingots for over a thousand years
by this point.
But the process was inefficientas the traders would need to
weigh out the ingots for eachtransaction, and they weren't
(15:29):
very divisible either, so therewould have been some manual work
to divide the ingots down toeven smaller units.
These micro units wereoriginally electron metals which
were naturally occurring mixesof silver and gold metals.
The way I've seen it explainedis that they were basically
(15:52):
nuggets that were traded,whether they meant it or not.
The thing that made thesenuggets so effective was the
fact that they were easier totransport and conceal from
potential thieves.
But, more importantly, theywere easily subdivided, to the
point that, theoretically, theycould be worth only a few days
(16:14):
worth of labor or worth aportion of a farmer's harvest.
The interesting thing aboutphysical coinage is that the
coins were ultimately preservedin the archaeological record.
Now, as I've mentioned in thepast, the idea of widespread
barter being used as a sort ofmoney may not have been a real
(16:36):
thing, because there reallyisn't any evidence of barter.
Instead, a lot of the latestthinking is there was a
widespread credit arrangementsystem that people used, and
what they would do is they wouldsettle up at a specified time
period.
The issue with this is thatmost records of the world would
(16:56):
not have survived, especiallythese, when these arrangements
were written on some sort ofpaper.
So finding hordes of protocoins or ingots was a great
source of economic information.
And just a little econ 101refresher.
We generally view money ashaving three functions, which
would have been a medium ofexchange, a unit of accounts and
(17:19):
a store of value.
Now the issue with theseelectric nuggets was the alloy
of gold and silver would havevaried, in its natural state,
between 65 and 85 percent gold.
In addition, the traders reallydidn't have the ability to
weigh or use touchstones to tellthe percentage of the material
(17:42):
with any precision.
Now it is widely believed thatif the Illidians had the ability
to separate the raw electrumbetween gold and silver, they
might have done so, but thetechnology took some time to
develop.
Although metals were abundant,they were rarely found in their
(18:05):
pure state, so they would haverequired some sort of separation
techniques that consumed largeamounts of human labor and
energy.
These metals were typicallyextracted from mines that were
owned by the king, along withthe silt of the Pactolus and
Hermos rivers, remember.
(18:25):
According to myth, the Pactolusriver was filled with gold
because King Midas had washed inthe river to rid himself of the
gift bestowed upon him byDionysus.
These electron micro ingotsbecame known as the world's
first coins.
They were initially produced bypouring the molten metal on a
(18:48):
plate.
Over the years, this evolvedinto pouring the metal into a
mold, which would have createdblank disks, which were called
flans.
Once these blanks were cooled,they would be struck with their
symbol by a hammer, which wouldallow the user to know the
origin of the coin.
They weren't very sophisticatedat first, as they were just
(19:11):
basic round shapes of metal witha basic stamp.
Stamping the coins with anofficial seal would have
conferred official value to it,which set the stater apart from
all other tokens that had beenused in trade previously.
By making these coins astandardized weight and size and
(19:34):
by stamping on them an insigniathat conferred their worth to
even the most illiterate person,the kings of Lydia
exponentially expanded thepossibilities of trade into and
out of Lydia.
So therefore one did not needto be able to work a scale, or
even own or possess a scale tobuy anything in the market.
(19:56):
As a result, commerce wasallowed to proceed much more
rapidly and honestly, but moreimportantly, this would have
served as a model for virtuallyall the subsequent coinage
everywhere.
The makeup of the coins wereinitially made from electron, as
I said before, an alloy ofapproximately 55% gold and 45%
(20:17):
silver and a tiny amount ofcopper.
The copper additives were thereto give the coin more
durability.
What other states realized wastheir coins were portable, hard
to counterfeit and had some kindof value, whether inherently or
by decree established by thegovernment.
For trade, and as we'vediscussed in the past, precious
(20:39):
metals of gold and silver hadlong been used as currencies
before the first coins camealong into being.
Prior to coinage, the preciousmetals could either be in the
form of rings or ingots, which,with ingots, I should have
clarified earlier, it'sbasically just bars, but they
were universally used by alltraders across the ancient world
(20:59):
.
With standardized weights,coins eliminated this
time-consuming and annoyingproblem of weighing and
verifying their content, makingthem quickly become a
universally accepted means oftrade.
Like all other ancient coinsthat came after it, including
the shekels, for example, thecoins represented units of
(21:22):
weight rather than a specificmonetary value.
If you look at the word stator,it meant that which balances
scales.
In ancient Greece, our modernEnglish word for money comes
from the Latin word of moneri,which means informing or to
announce the value of a metalweight of a coin.
(21:45):
Eventually, our modern versionof the word coin will come from
the French, when they use theword to describe a die stamping
the coin, and the word bank willbe derived from the word bench,
because the money changers inmedieval Italy sat on benches
when performing their bankingoperations.
(22:08):
And, as I mentioned prior,essentially military campaigns
were almost always governed byplunder.
From the early days of Sumer,you couldn't really necessarily
pay a standing army with certainkind of coins, because coins
didn't exist, but any kind ofmetals or anything like that,
(22:29):
because a lot of times youdidn't really have them or you
didn't have enough food to payfor the standing army.
So you incentivize your army byplunder, right.
So the typical army forthousands of years would rely
upon plunder to basically feedthemselves and make enough money
(22:50):
that they can send back homeand live off of.
Now the problem with plunderand looting to pay soldiers is
it sounds well and good becauseyou don't really have to take
the risk of paying for them.
But then the problem is afteryou plunder and take over a
(23:10):
region, you must govern citiesand towns that were essentially
destroyed.
So now you're governing over adestroyed area, which means that
your tax resources would havealso been destroyed.
So in the end, using coins topay soldiers is a much more
(23:31):
practical way to compensatesoldiers rather than having them
constantly destroying citiesand killing many inhabitants in
the place that you need togovern going forward, many
inhabitants in the place thatyou need to govern going forward
.
(23:55):
So, even though paying forsoldiers through coin is a much
easier and better way,ultimately as far as governing
goes, there was one littleproblem with the original
Electronian coins, with theoriginal electron-lidium coins.
Now, bear in mind, every coinshould have a face value higher
than the original cost ofproduction.
This concept of productionversus face value is known as
(24:16):
seniorage, which meansgovernments literally are able
to make money by creating money.
There is, however, a moderncase that goes against this
concept, as the one cent nowcosts nearly two cents to mint
and the US produces billions ofthem every year at a very
significant financial loss.
So this is, in part, a bigreason why you often hear people
(24:41):
say we should get rid of thepenny from circulation.
Now, getting back to Lydia, theLydian government generally
assessed the face value of thecoins at a little more than
their underlying value of theweight in metals in the coins.
Therefore, the local andforeign markets would have
(25:02):
traded coins that were in fact,overvalued in comparison to the
underlying weights.
Therefore, the government wasable to generate a profitable
spread between the underlyingingots and the accepted value of
the coins.
To appease this controversy,the Lydians struck the coins
with religious symbols tofurther induce their usage,
(25:25):
because now you are payingtribute to the gods.
So it appears that Lydia wasthe first state to circulate
coins.
Now, bear in mind, india andChina also developed coins
independently of Lydia.
However, most historiansbelieve Lydia had minted coins
(25:46):
first.
So you might hear people saythat actually China invented it
first or India invented it first.
It's quite possible that theydid, but all signs seem to point
to the fact that Lydia wasactually first.
So initially, as technologyimproved in the 7th century BCE,
(26:09):
the merchants were alreadyproficient at weighing tiny
objects such as coins.
Proficient at weighing tinyobjects such as coins.
Therefore, the merchants couldeasily detect if there was a
discrepancy between theunderlying weights of the
electron coins and the facevalue of the coins.
Since they were obligated toaccept the face value, it wasn't
(26:29):
uncommon for merchants to lookto the black market to try and
reduce the spread by tradingthese coins in the black market.
And when I say black market.
What I mean by this is thattraders would hide their goods
and then sell the goods underthe table for pure silver or
coins valued at their higherweights, not their legal face
(26:50):
value.
So in other words, coins wereabsolutely used in the
underground economy by the 7thcentury BCE.
The first Greek coins appearedin Aegina around 600 BCE.
It should be noted that coinagein Greece wasn't really fully
accepted on the mainland untilAlexander moved into Anatolia.
(27:13):
On the mainland, untilAlexander moved into Anatolia,
however, the rise of localIonian cornage meant competition
for the Lydians, especially dueto the fact that they were
using pure silver, meaning thepeople accepted the coins knew
precisely the makeup of themetals, unlike the electron
coins.
So in foreign trade Lady andKings couldn't really benefit
(27:36):
from the full value of theElectrum coins.
So in other words, they wouldhave had to take a negative
spread once the Electrum coinsreached another kingdom.
Therefore the foreign merchantsunderestimated the unknowable
gold content of the electrum.
Coins with an inconsistent paleyellow color of electrum were
(28:02):
typically downgraded as silverby neglecting the gold portion
in the alloy.
Merchants instead weighed theLydian coins and compared their
value to Greek silver coins orfined silver ounces.
Before I move further.
(28:23):
Coins really ended up providinghistorians some color as to the
local histories of certainkingdoms.
So, for example, coins gives uschronologies of ancient kings,
which is somewhat obvious, butit also gives us an idea about
the hierarchy of local deitiesand the ideologies of ancient
(28:45):
republics.
This ultimately led to a wholenew field of study, known as
numismatics, which is devoted tothe study of coins, which in
reality, is amongst the mostproductive fields in historical
research.
To be honest, to give you anidea where we are in the
(29:06):
historical timeline, this isafter the fall of the Assyrians,
babylon once again became thedominant city-state in
Mesopotamia.
The Medes had controlled thearea now known as Iran.
In 605 BCE, nebuchadnezzar IItook control of the Babylonian
Empire and during his 40-yearreign, the one thing he is
(29:30):
probably most known for is hishandling of Judah.
This was caused because, in 600BCE, the king of Judah made a
decision not to pay tribute toNebuchadnezzar.
In 598 BCE, the Babylonian armymarched into Jerusalem, the
capital of Judah and thecultural center of the Jewish
(29:53):
people.
Long story short, the battlelasted about three months and
resulted in the exiles of theJewish people.
So that is where we are in ourtimeline Now the early Lydian
kingdoms had relative peace withits neighbors, but the peace
didn't last forever, as theLydians and the Medes had
(30:14):
engaged in a war that dragged onfor six long years.
Around 585 BCE, during a battlebetween the Medes and the
Lydians, they turned into night.
This pretty much freaked outboth sides, as they came to
believe that it was a sign fromthe gods, they immediately threw
(30:35):
down their weapons andreconciled their differences and
peace was established.
Now there's some controversyregarding this eclipse.
As it was told by Herodotus,some modern scholars think it
wasn't a solar eclipse but alunar eclipse, right before the
moon rise at dusk on eitherSeptember 3rd 609 BCE or July
(30:57):
4th 585 BCE.
But either way, the eclipseappears to have happened and
peace was established shortlythereafter.
Like I said, prior, eliades hadbecome the king of Lydia around
610 BCE, but it was his son,cretaceous, who would be the
(31:18):
centerpiece of this particularepisode when he became the king
around 560 BCE.
The next great leap forward incoinage came under the reign of
Cretaceous, who ruled Lydia fromabout 560 to 546 BCE.
You may or may not be familiarwith the name, but you may be
(31:41):
familiar with the expressionRichest Cretaceous, as he was
known to be the world's richestman.
Cretaceous cut his teeth inpolitics as he served as a
viceroy under his father,eliades.
He served as a viceroy underhis father Eliades.
It's quite possible that thisexperience helped him understand
(32:01):
how the political economy,especially with regards to the
ease and efficiency that coinagebrought to it, along with
international and local trade.
As such, croesus was the onewho probably stretched the
kingdom to its farthest, as hehad conquered the Ionian Greeks
along the west coast of Anatolia, and then he had pushed his
(32:23):
border all the way out eastuntil he was neighboring Persia.
Now I should make it clear that, despite the fact that he was
overseeing the Ionian Greeks, hestill maintained a good
relation with the Greeks.
But I didn't really want totalk about Croesus' ability to
increase his land and holdings,because that's really not the
(32:46):
main point of this episode.
About 10 years into his reign,around 550 BCE, lydian
metallurgy advanced to the pointthat they had developed a way
of separating gold and silverout of the electrum in a long
chemical process in a furnace.
As such, it appears that he was, in fact, the first Lydian king
(33:10):
to issue separate gold andseparate silver coins.
From then on, his royal seal onthe coin certified a fine
silver or gold medal.
Afterward, the foreignmerchants began to accept the
coins on its face value, withoutany sort of discount to its
face value.
Each silver or gold coin had aprecise value and weight,
(33:32):
specified by law.
In addition, the Lydian kingfixed the values of gold versus
silver, as an ounce of gold hada stronger value than an ounce
of silver.
So therefore one gold weightwas worth 10 silver weights.
In effect, the Lydianspracticed bimetallism, whereas
(33:55):
the government circulated bothsilver and gold coins separately
.
The king therefore had to havea good understanding of the
aggregate supply and demand foreach of the metals as to make
sure he kept a proper balancebetween circulating the proper
amounts of gold versus silvercoins.
(34:15):
Now, since the Lydian king hadincreased the circulation and
had a monopoly over theproduction of coinage, he was
able to enforce strictcompliance of the coins.
In fact, the early coins wouldlater be known by historians as
the Crescids, named afterCretaceous.
With that being said, herealized that increasing the
(34:39):
circulation of gold and silvercoins would bring tremendous
wealth to the kingdom, but alsoit would mean that the Lydian
king would also increase itssphere of influence
internationally, especially withhis trading partners, its
sphere of influenceinternationally, especially with
its trading partners.
(34:59):
So he might be the mostimportant historical figure when
it comes to internationalmonetary policy, and thus the
unintended consequence would behe expanded international trade,
forever going forward.
This all led to his legendarywealth, as in the name Riches
Croesus, which at the time, Ithink it would be safe to say
(35:20):
that he was, in fact, therichest man in the world.
Now, as a reminder, croesus didnot invent coins.
In reality, it was probablyinvented by his father, who
invented the first electrumcoins.
But, like I said, duringCretaceous's reign they were
able to separate the electruminto pure gold and silver.
(35:42):
Now, like I said, this meansthat they were going to be
operating on a bimetal system.
So the fact that they were ableto operate on a bimetal system
meant that trade would becomemuch more efficient in Lydia,
and this would have essentiallysolidified Sardis as the
(36:03):
preeminent cosmopolitan city inthe known world at the time,
because, ultimately, tradersfrom far and wide would find
that selling goods in Sardismeans that you would be able to
get an accurate amount of goldor silver in the transaction and
, more importantly, they hadgold and silver.
This access to gold and silveris the important part, because
(36:27):
that will be a problem,especially in Europe when we get
around the beginnings of theRenaissance period, because they
just didn't have any gold orsilver in Europe.
It just wasn't in circulation.
People were hoarding it, sotrade was restricted
dramatically in medieval Europebecause of that.
So with an increased moneysupply, this would mean that
(36:52):
people would naturally flock toSardis because ultimately people
generally will flock to placesthat have money.
Now I want to be clear.
I don't want you to think ofthis time and location like a
modern liquid market where coinsor money is overflowing in the
marketplaces.
In reality, lydia would have aproblem that so many others
(37:18):
afterward would have whenthey're using metal coins.
This problem will be verypronounced.
Like I said, in medieval Europethis continued for centuries, in
that they just like the peoplein medieval Europe when we get
to it, what they would do is theLydians tended to hoard coins
(37:38):
when they first came intocirculation.
So just to be clear, it wasn'tlike they just developed gold
and silver coins and within ashort time period everyday
citizens were using them.
In fact, coinage was initiallymore used by traders who had
bought and sold goods on awholesale level because,
(38:02):
shockingly, these coins did nottrickle down to the middle class
all that quickly.
Ultimately, these coins weregenerally too expensive to pay
for general labor and theyweren't practical for retail
transactions.
However, herodotus seems toindicate that one of the reasons
(38:24):
why the Lydians in particularhad developed coinage was due to
the fact that they werewholesale providers and they
also had a vast amount of retailbusinesses.
To encourage coinage and a moreretail and everyday use, the
Lydians also developed coppercoins for smaller transactions,
(38:48):
but even these smaller coinsweren't really necessarily used
by ordinary citizens.
So, with that being said, theIllydian kings decided to take
things a step further with theirgold and silver coins.
As they had figured trade wouldbe even more efficient with
even smaller denominations.
(39:09):
So what they did was segmentthe coins into seven different
weights, of which they wouldstrike even more coins, all the
way down to one 192nd of astator, which meant that it
weighed less than a tenth of agram, which would have equaled
(39:32):
to about 0.004 ounces, whichwould have equaled to about
0.004 ounces.
So what this means is thatpayments could now theoretically
be accepted in large and evensmall payments, and this would
have allowed for change to bemade if someone only had larger
(39:55):
denominations of coins.
Since Cretius was concerned withspreading his sphere of
influence, it appears thatCretaceous made a conscious
effort to ensure that mintedcoins could be used outside the
Lydian borders with auniversally accepted value.
This notion helped contributeto the expansion of the Lenin
Empire, especially by the timeCretaceous took power.
(40:17):
Once he came to the throne ofLydia, he had secured allies
with the Medes, sparta, egyptand Babylon, so this meant that
he was in a pretty secure spotWith his wealth.
Cretaceous was credited withthe construction of the Temple
(40:37):
of Artemis, which was one of theseven wonders of the world.
Like I mentioned prior, therewas a ton of crossover between
the Lydian and the Greek culture, especially with the
worshipping of the same gods, asit was clearly seen on their
coinage.
(40:58):
The thing is, whenever certaingroups of people become
extremely wealthy, it's almostcertain that other groups of
people won't speak highly ofthem, or they would have created
some kind of negativestereotypes about them.
We certainly see this in moderntimes with certain ethnic or
religious groups, and it was nodifferent with the ancients.
(41:21):
Certain ethnic or religiousgroups, and it was no different
with the ancients.
Herodotus called the Lydians anation of merchants or sellers,
but this was kind of a dogwhistle feel to it, as it was
known to be a negative undertone, because they were basically
calling them hucksters or modernsnake oil salesmen or whatever
(41:43):
you want to use.
He inferred that moneyultimately became very important
in their society.
Basically, the same thing wassaid about the Phoenicians as
well.
According to Herodotus, girlsfrom the lower classes were
forced to go into prostitutionas soon as they were mature
enough in order to save enoughfor their own dowry so they can
(42:05):
eventually get married.
In addition, it sounds likegambling may have developed into
a relatively small problem aswell, which kind of makes sense.
If you have extra money,there's a good chance you might
gamble it away because you havesomething and you're just trying
to create more and other peopleare buying things and creating
(42:25):
things and you just want to keepup with the Joneses.
And gambling is ultimatelyprobably viewed as a get rich
kind of scheme that I could seeeasily be employed in a place
like Lydia, when money isoverflowing and people becoming
very wealthy.
And it's also probably worthnoting something you probably
(42:52):
already know Gold has relativelyfew practical purposes outside
of decoration and somesophisticated modern
technological applications, sotherefore it lacked utility,
even more so in the ancientsocieties.
However, unlike copper, whichturns green, iron, which rusts
and silver, which tarnishes,pure gold remains pure and
(43:16):
unchanged.
Another thing with regards tocirculation it probably wasn't
like coins just showed up oneday and everybody was like, okay
, it has a unique stamp on it,so it should be okay to use.
Instead, it's more likely thatthe use of coins probably had a
slow burn at first before itreally took off in Lydia really
(43:46):
took off in Lydia.
Some tend to think that coinagewas really boosted when Greek
mercenary soldiers begandemanding coinage as payment for
their services, since coinscould easily be stored for
future use.
Now I'm kind of getting aheadof myself, but if you look at
the Persian empire, coinage wasslow to adapt because they
primarily used coins in placesthat mercenary soldiers required
(44:06):
coin as payment.
If it wasn't for them, it'squite possible that coinage
would almost not have beencirculated at all in the Persian
Empire.
As coinage evolved more andmore, the coins themselves would
get stamped on both sides tocommunicate more information to
the public.
The one thing that wasn'tstamped on the coins was
(44:28):
numerical dates, for obviousreasons and, of course, with
coinage developing and gettingmore sophisticated and more
widespread in use.
It was the capital city ofSardis that probably benefited
the most from all thesedevelopments.
The Lydian capital of Sardisappears to have been divided
(44:51):
between the rich and the poor,whereas the rich, including the
king, lived in the upper part ofthe city, while the poor
resided in the lower part of thecity, which wasn't protected by
a wall, which ultimately letthem be vulnerable to outside
invaders.
Now, since Sardis developedinto a wealthy city that had
(45:13):
access to gold and silver andhad prosperous trade routes
coming to and from the city, itappears that it may have been
the first ever to have permanentretail stores.
Now, I presume that they wouldhave been in the upper part of
the city that was protected bythe walls and near the wealthy.
(45:34):
Therefore, the most affluentpeople in the city would have
had easy access to internationalgoods and, because of this, the
city would have attractedpeople from far and wide,
including, obviously, the Greeks, but also people from
Mesopotamia, meaning that Sardiswould have been one of the
earliest, if not the earliest,cosmopolitan city.
(45:56):
And because of this, sardiswould be a melting pot which
attracted intellectuals and newideas from far and wide.
Now, with regards to trade, theLydians granted special
statuses to merchants, termingthem the people of the market.
As such, they enjoyed a higherstatus than commoners in the
(46:22):
social realm.
As great as the concept ofcoinage was, it appears that the
coins were likely hoarded bythe kings and the upper classes.
Thus, elite families developedover time.
Now, with the ever-increasingusage and circulation of coinage
within Lydia and its tradepartners, wealth was flowing
(46:45):
more and more into Lydia.
As a result, wealthy familieswere becoming mainstay in the
kingdom.
However, it appears that manyof the elite families in Lydia
were really bad at managingtheir money, as many had
completely squandered theirwealth.
It appears that they couldn'tcontrol themselves when it came
(47:06):
to luxury goods.
In part, it was probablybecause the elites became mired
in an escalating game ofone-upsmanship.
In other words, they engaged inserious cases of conspicuous
consumption to show theirneighbors that they were
economically superior, whetherit's the bigger house or
(47:28):
building a larger tomb.
This sounds very modern, by theway.
This is something we see allthe time.
So, therefore, the elites endedup destroying the wealth that
their ancestors had accumulated.
The elites of Sardis used theirnew wealth for conspicuous
consumption instead of investingfor long-term growth of their
(47:51):
assets, cretaceous being chiefamong them, as he did with so
many other kings the day beforehim, as he poured his wealth
into vanity projects, especiallybuildings and mercenary
soldiers.
Now, with regards to the tombsin Lydia, the Lydians sort of
had an Egyptian feel to them, inthat the elites of Lydia were
(48:15):
often buried with extremelyvaluable items which would
ultimately give historians a lotof valuable information
regarding the society they livedin at the time.
However, lydia, just like Egypt, had experienced a lot of grave
robberies over the years and,as a result, so much of the
history was plundered andsmuggled outside of Turkey.
(48:38):
However, you can still see alot of these items in various
museums around the world to thisday.
So not as all lost, but I wouldimagine a lot of people in
Turkey feel that they have beenlooted of their culture, but
luckily, many have been returnedover the years, where they were
(48:58):
placed in the care of Ankara'sMuseum of Anatolian
Civilizations.
So, while theft of burial tombsbecame a problem after the fact,
another issue that wasbeginning to creep into society
and would be a problem forliterally the next 2,000 years
(49:19):
was the fact that the coinswould often be worth more than
the metal itself.
Much of this was due tocounterfeiters, who often used
methods to swindle recipients byreplacing the original metal
content with something else.
One of the methods that wasused was an alloy, which was a
(49:41):
mixture of metals that resembledthe original metal.
The trick is to make the coinwith another cheap metal and
then cover it with the preciousmetal so that the visible part
of the coin looked perfect.
Another way to commit this formof fraud was through coin
(50:02):
debasements, which involvesremoving some of the metal from
the coin in the most subtle waypossible.
This can be done by scrapingthe outer parts of the coin in
the act of shaving off a smallportion of the precious metal
(50:24):
portion of the precious metal.
Over time, the precious metalclippings would be saved up and
melted into bullion or used tomake new coins.
So while coinage was makingLydia wealthy, it did cause some
unintended consequences.
In part, it may have ledCretaceous to think his kingdom
was invincible.
Now it is important to notewhat was going on in the world
(50:46):
at the time.
In Iran, the Persians, underthe rule of Cyrus the Great, had
taken control of Iran whenCyrus had overthrown the Median
Empire, which was run byAstyages, the king of the Medes
and Cyrus' grandfather, in 550BCE.
Around 547 BCE, cyrus the Greathad been making certain
(51:08):
assertions and arrangements withthe Ionian Greeks behind
Cretaceous' back.
It's quite possible that Cyruswas initially using the Ionian
Greeks to provoke Cretaceous and, more more importantly, to
destabilize Lydia.
Now Cretaceous whether he waslooking to provoke the Persians
(51:29):
or not led his troops intocentral and eastern Anatolia to
capture the city of Tyria and,in the process, began selling
its citizens into slaveryprocess began selling its
citizens into slavery.
Well, that provocation wasn'tgoing to work for Cyrus or the
Persians and, as a result, itgave him an excuse to expand his
(51:52):
empire even further intoAnatolia.
So his army of Persians andMedes marched to Cappadocia.
As such of Persians and Medesmarched to Cappadocia, as such,
cretaceous received word thatthe Persians were going to
attack his kingdom.
In response to this action bythe Persians, he consulted the
Oracle of Delphi, who prophesiedthat Cretaceous would destroy a
(52:15):
great empire if he went to war.
What does that mean?
I don't even know.
Does he mean, is it thePersians or the Lydians?
Who really knows?
I mean, it's pretty vague andnot very clear.
But also, too, this seems likeone of those kind of reoccurring
stories that you hearthroughout history, that
so-and-so goes to meet withso-and-so, and in the process a
(52:38):
vague response is given thatcould mean either their kingdom
is killed or the other kingdomis killed off.
It's kind of a recurring thingthat you kind of hear, you know,
every once in a while, and thisis just another case of it.
So, by all accounts, the Lydiansheld their own at first, and
(52:59):
their first battles wereessentially a draw, but the
winter was approaching, and thattypically meant that
campaigning season was basicallyover.
As such, cretaceous expectedCyrus to head home back to
Persia for the winter, so hewithdrew his troops from Sardis
and sent word to his allies tobe ready in the spring, and
(53:22):
really not immediately.
However, cyrus didn't retirefor the winter.
He surprised Cretaceous bychasing him back to Sardis.
But either way, cretaceousstill had a much bigger army of
approximately 420,000 mencompared to Cyrus' 196,000
(53:42):
soldiers.
When Cyrus caught back up, whathe did was a bit of
psychological warfare by puttingregular camels in the front.
Now, you might not think muchof this to yourself.
You know camels up front.
Why does that matter?
Well, the reason why this hadan impact was that the Lydian
(54:03):
horses had never seen them andwere terrified by their size and
smell.
They could not be controlledand basically fled the
battlefield.
So this one single actdecimated the Lydian cavalry.
Cyrus eventually capturedCroesus and it sounds like Cyrus
(54:23):
was really mad and wanted toexecute Croesus on a giant
bonfire.
But apparently the gods hadstepped in and a rainstorm
doused the funeral pyre andCroesus was saved.
And apparently, after he wassaved by the gods, croesus had
said to Cyrus you should stopyour soldiers from burning and
(54:43):
looting Sardis.
Cyrus said why?
And Cretaceous replied becauseyou have defeated me, the city
belongs to you.
Why let your men destroy it?
Cyrus thought about it andagreed and spared his life.
And on top of that, becausethis is Cyrus the Great, he
decided to give Cretaceous a jobas an advisor to him.
(55:05):
Now you're going to probablythink I'm a little bit nuts, but
for some reason, when I readthese stories, especially this
story, the one thing that seemsto pop in my head when I read
this initially was when inScarface.
When in Scarface, when TonyMontana killed his former boss,
(55:28):
frank and decided to spare Erniehis life and gave him a job.
So Ernie thought he was goingto get killed by Tony Montana
and he said hey, you want a job.
So he drinks the alcohol andhe's shaking because he's so
scared, but for some reason thatjust plays in my head when I
read this story, and I know it'skind of silly, but it's just
the way my mind works.
Anyway, getting back to thestory from a military strategic
(55:49):
location, lydia was a bufferzone for Ionian Greek
city-states on the Aegean Sea.
Now, I don't think I'vementioned it or not, but nearly
half the Greeks lived outside oftoday's Greece mainland.
They stayed connected to themotherland through trade and
culture, but they hadindependent governments.
(56:12):
Cyrus' general was advising himto keep marching west and
conquer Ionian Greek city-states.
To keep marching west andconquer Ionian Greek city-states
.
Now, this was truly shocking tothe other Greek city-states on
the mainland, as they hadunderstood that they had a
potential powerful enemy righton their doorstep.
(56:34):
Despite the defeats, not a lothad changed, as the Ionians
maintained their ability to rulethemselves if they paid their
tribute and sent men to fight inthe Persian military.
However, the Ionians wouldoccasionally rebel against their
Persian overlords, of which amajor rebellion happened around
(56:56):
500 BCE, of which theretaliation was swift and severe
, as the Persian army burntSardis to the ground to send a
message.
However, the city was rebuiltsoon afterward, but the message
was delivered Incredibly.
Even after Lydia was ruled bythe Persians, the Cretaceous
(57:17):
coinage remained in use forquite a long time afterward.
So many Lydian gold or silverstaters dating after the fall of
Cretaceous have been around forover centuries that many
historians believe the newPersian rulers of Anatolia
continued to use the same coindyes at the Sardis Mint for some
(57:40):
many years afterward.
In 334 BCE, sardis was taken byAlexander the Great.
When the Romans took control ofthe region around 133 BCE, they
made Lydia an administrativedistrict, as it still held
tremendous value to whoever heldthe region.
Tremendous value to whoeverheld the region For as long as
(58:03):
standing armies were created.
We're talking back as far aseven Sargon and his enormous
standing army of over 6,000soldiers.
The biggest problem was how doyou provision the army?
For the longest time, kingsjust did not have the resources
readily available to pay theirarmies, and when I say pay, that
(58:25):
can mean a whole many differentthings, whether it's providing
some sort of lodging orproviding meals, or even
providing certain necessitiesthat would make life much easier
, such as paying in salt.
So, to overcome this lack ofresources to pay soldiers, one
of the biggest motivations wasthe fact that the king would
(58:46):
allow his soldiers anopportunity to plunder and
conquer the villages and townsand cities.
In order to make the plunderworth their while, they needed
to have things that they couldtake back to be valuable or,
even more importantly, portable.
As such, precious metals andprecious stones would have been
(59:08):
the most ideal items to plunder,as you can get your biggest
bang for your buck due to thevalue to size ratio.
Therefore, it wasn't uncommonfor individuals to come into
wealth through theft and plunder.
(59:29):
So I always remember thinking tomyself why would these soldiers
, officers and governmentofficials be okay participating
in these long, protracted wars?
Why didn't they just lose theirnerve or just get frustrated
and go AWOL in large numbers?
Why did they stick around andsee it through, even though it
could be years or decades?
Well, the reason is, war couldprovide you with life-changing
(59:54):
wealth, along with the glorythat you may be seeking Now.
The fact is, when individualscome into a great deal of wealth
in a relatively short amount oftime, they are going to look to
spend it and therefore thereare going to be people who are
looking to sell their goods andservices and, as a result, you
(01:00:16):
end up with newer and largermarketplaces.
Not all these marketplaces wereon the up and up because, just
like in modern times, whenpeople come into a lot of wealth
doing unsavory things, you'llhave large black markets pop up.
So you can see how, even as faras back in these ancient
civilizations, war oftenstimulated economies, whether it
(01:00:40):
was above or below board.
Like I said, it wasn't justabout plundering money, but it
was also about glory.
Now I realize glory is probablyan idea that may or may not
resonate with the modernthinking the way it resonated
with ancient societies, but warwas constant in ancient
societies, ancient societies.
(01:01:03):
But war was constant in ancientsocieties and it may have been
the fact that, yes, glory playeda major part in that.
But it's quite possible thatthese constant states of warfare
were pushed forward as animpetus for developing trade,
especially when trade involvedprecious metals and stones,
particularly when they aresmaller in size and more
(01:01:25):
portable and easily broken downinto smaller amounts.
So, in the end, warring withplaces like Lydia was a gamble
that the soldiers on either sidecould end up with significant
amounts of precious metals,which then meant marketplaces
were bound to spring up withinclose proximity of these
(01:01:46):
soldiers.
In other words, war hadstimulative economic effects,
just like you hear in modernparlance that war is great for
the economy.
Well, until it isn't so, theLydians started using coins that
developed and then, within arelatively short time period,
(01:02:07):
maybe within 80 years or so, theGreeks also started using
coinage.
And it may be just one of thosecrazy, weird coincidences, but
the Greeks developed a phalanxtactic right around the same
time that they had adoptedcoinage.
So maybe it was a thing thatthe Greeks had realized that
they better be superior on thebattlefield because now they had
(01:02:31):
an even bigger incentive atplunder, and therefore the
Greeks almost became obsessivewith drilling and training its
hoplite soldiers, because maybethey realized that they're going
to have to defend their growingwealth.
But also, whenever theyplundered a foreign kingdom, the
(01:02:53):
raw materials brought back intothe Greek city-states could be
broken down into some sort ofcoinage and therefore, by
increasing coinage to thegovernment, they were able to
increase its capacity for trade,increase its economies of scale
when producing weaponry andtools and also be able to afford
mercenary soldiers to feed thegrowing military-industrial
(01:03:13):
complex, which was an investmentto bring back more raw
materials to create more coinageto increase its army and navy.
And you can say that thisultimately got its start with
the Lydians.
Now that these governments hadtheir own coins, they were able
to implement rules that theircoins would be accepted wherever
(01:03:36):
they collected taxes or imposedany kind of fees or fines.
Thus, what they were doing isestablishing uniform national
markets for trade.
Now I want to be clear that themarkets were originally more or
less a side effect ofgovernment systems when they
first started to appear inplaces like Sumer.
Now you can see that placeslike Lydia and then later the
(01:04:01):
Greeks, the marketplaces becameincreasingly entangled with the
military-industrial complex.
So, going forward from theLydians, what we really see is
whenever there's an increase inmilitary activity, there will
also be an increase in the usageand production of coinage,
along with other things such asslavery.
(01:04:23):
So therefore, the naturalprogression would be people
would become more materialisticin nature.
So we see more conspicuousconsumption as a result of
military action and plunder.
And I want to make sure that I'mclear, because I mentioned
(01:04:43):
conspicuous consumption prior.
What that really means ispeople who are purposely going
out and buying goods just sothey can show off to their
neighbors.
I remember seeing an articlepublished by the guys at
Freakonomics Radio where theybasically said that, despite the
fact that there were severaltypes of hybrid cars in the
(01:05:06):
marketplace, the Toyota Priusfar outsold other hybrid car
sales, despite the fact that thePrius had essentially similar
miles per gallon ratings.
And the reason why the Priussold in much higher numbers is
because the people wanted othersto know that they were in fact
(01:05:29):
driving hybrid, because thePrius had a unique look and you
can easily identify it as ahybrid vehicle versus another
car model that was identical toits non-hybrid design.
So that form of conspicuousconsumption is a lot more subtle
than just seeing who could goout and buy the largest house or
(01:05:51):
build the largest tomb.
But either way, more wealthwill almost always increase
conspicuous consumption, evenwhen people will say that they
will never show off their wealthor show that they got an
increase in their salaries.
So what I'm getting at ismaterialism really takes a great
(01:06:12):
leap forward with the advent ofcoinage.
Coins would eventually carry asea power message across the
trading world from the ancientGreek city-states to Imperial
Britain, and then, as coinagebecomes more widely circulated,
you start to see the idea ofpure greed being put on steroids
(01:06:33):
.
Now, when we get to theclassical Greek city-states, you
start to really see a pushbackagainst the monetization and the
idea of coinage and bankingbeing something less desirable
as compared to landowning andfarming.
But the fact is, whether peoplepush back against it or not,
(01:06:55):
the Lydians planted the seedsfor the modern economies to
develop and thrive for the next2,500 years, for the modern
economies to develop and thrivefor the next 2,500 years.
I want to thank you for takingthe time to listen to these two
parts on ancient Anatolia.
Now I want to be clear I reallyliked doing these episodes,
(01:07:19):
these two episodes in particular, because this was kind of
really what I was kind oflooking to do when I first
started this podcast.
I really wanted to discussbanking, especially in the
United States.
But you know, as I kind of wentback further and further into
the development of money, youkind of really went all the way
back actually to Sumer, reallywhen money really first started.
(01:07:40):
But then, when you look atcoinage, it was really the
Lydians who really helpedkickstart the idea of using
coins.
I mean, we do know that theChinese and the Indians played a
major part in this as well, butI think it was someone like
Cretaceous who became worldfamous and was really the first
(01:08:04):
ever kind of mega superstar whenit comes to wealth.
But, more importantly, I thinkyou can kind of really see
credit for basically everythingwhen it comes to ancient
societies and developments.
Kind of really push asideplaces like Lydia and we push
(01:08:40):
aside ancient China and ancientIndia, but all these ancient
societies played their part increating the modern
international economies thatkind of really feed off of each
other and we need quite honestly.
So.
I hope you really enjoyed theseepisodes and I look forward to
(01:09:01):
discussing more in the nearfuture.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
Also, you can help out the showa ton by leaving a five-star
(01:09:23):
review and telling a friendabout it.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
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