Spade money was an early form of coin used during the Zhou dynasty of China (1045 to 256 BC). Spade money was shaped like a spade or weeding tool. Hollow-handled spades (Chinese: 布幣; pinyin: bùbì) are a link between weeding tools used for barter and…
In China, cowries were so important that many characters relating to money or trade contain the character for cowry: 貝. Starting over three thousand years ago, cowry shells, or copies of the shells, were used as Chinese currency.[2] The Classical…