Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/317

Rh of antiquarians. Mr. Del Mar gives us pictures of several of these, the earliest being a coin of the Emperor Sung, dating 2257 years before Christ. These early coins are of various shapes, some being round with a square or round hole in the center, and some oblong with a hole at one end, evidently for stringing them. These oblong coins are spoken of as knife-shaped or bell-shaped, though the resemblances thus indicated are not very apparent. Dr. Tylor, whose careful research no evidence of this nature escapes, observes, in his standard work on "Anthropology," that "perhaps the earliest money may have been the Chinese little marked cubes of gold, and the pieces of copper in the shape of shirts and knives, as though intended to represent real shirts and knives." This is certainly an acute and striking suggestion; but we have to consider that the circular pieces, the most common of all, could hardly have been intended to represent any implement or other object of traffic. And when we refer to California, where, as has been seen, oblong pieces of shell, perforated at one end, were used as a variety of their currency, we are led to suppose that the early copper coins of the Chinese, both oblong and round, derived their shapes from imitation of the still earlier disks and strips of tortoise-shell which they superseded.



A singular usage still prevailing in China seems to point back to a time when the ordinary money was made of some combustible material. "Mock-money," as it is called, is composed of tin-foil and paper, and this is burned in large quantities at funerals and in sacrifices to the gods. In California, as has been seen, the Indians were accustomed to burn their shell-money in a similar manner. The Eastern Indians buried wampum with their dead, and burned it in their sacrifices.

Thus shell-money of this peculiar description, composed of small circular disks, perforated and strung together, and used both as currency and also (so far as our information extends) in important public and religious ceremonies, has been traced from the eastern coast of North America westward across the continent to California, and thence through the Micronesian Archipelago to China. In no other parts of the world, except those situated along or near this line (as in some parts of Melanesia), has the use of this singular currency been known. It is possible, of course, that the custom may have originated