He wants thirty chickens for the cow and I don't have thirty chickens

Spent the whole morning trying to turn barley into a goat. — Farmer, about 700 BC

Before coins, you paid in metal, and every time you did, somebody had to weigh it and test it. Then somebody in what's now western Turkey started stamping lumps of electrum, a natural mix of gold and silver from the local rivers, with a lion's head. The stamp meant nobody had to weigh anything. Modern lab tests show the king's mint had been quietly adding silver, which brought the gold down to about 55%. The stamp vouched for the coin. Nobody vouched for the stamp.

Still bugs us: splitting one dinner check six ways.

The full file

The kings of Lydia weren't done. Croesus, who ruled about 560 to 546 BC, is credited with the first coins of pure gold and pure silver. No more mixing. In 1968 a Harvard and Cornell dig at Sardis found his gold refinery beside the stream, the earliest place anyone is known to have split electrum into gold and silver.

It didn't save him. Croesus asked the oracle at Delphi whether he should attack Persia, and was told that if he did, he would destroy a great empire. He marched. It was his own. Cyrus took Sardis in 546 BC. Always ask the oracle a follow-up question.

Relates to No. 00600.