The story of the cowry is a unique success story. Cowries are white or yellow porcelain-like shells, between 1 and 3 centimetres long, first collected on the Maldives, later also in the Philippines and Tonga.
Cowries were used in ancient China from 1500 BC to 200 AD as a form of money. Arab traders carried the shells from India back to their home countries and to West Africa. By the 19th century, cowries had developed into a kind of "key currency" over an astonishingly wide area from Polynesia to Mauritania (roughly 20,000 km apart).
Source:
René Sedillot: Muscheln, Münzen und Papier
|
