Money

What is money and where does it come from? We may think we know the answers, but Felix Martin traverses the globe and delves into ancient history to radically reconfigure our understanding of man's greatest invention. Across the centuries and continents, currency has come in many different forms: sugar in the West Indies, nails in Scotland, tobacco in Virginia, dried cod in Newfoundland. But how did the concept of currency arise? Popular economics will tell us that today's financial structure evolved from bartering, mankind's oldest economic system. But this, says Martin, is flawed history.