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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >I have never stated gold is not money.  But there are time in history when 
> other things have been used as money.

And times when other things have been used but gold has not.


>  
> >I'm not an historian, so I don't know the exact percentage of time that 
> >man 
> has agreed to use gold as money over other items as currency, but I have 
> read it often enough to accept that it is true. 

The first use of gold as money goes back to the Greek colony of Lydia and 
dates from the mid 600's BCE.  The coins were made of naturally occurring 
alloy 
of gold and sliver called 'electrum' (the Latinized form of the Greek word 
'electron') so called because it looked like a lump of amber (Greek 'electra' 
= 
amber, electricity got its name from the static electricity effect of rubbing 
amber on wool).  That is, originally the gold alloy was deemed valuable 
because 
it looked like the even more valuable amber.

>From Lydia the concept of coinage spread to Greece proper and the rest of 
>the 
Greek speaking world.  The oldest Roman coins are from about 300 years later.

The Chinese used a written voucher system that is sometimes mistakenly called 
'paper money' and after that time (600 BCE) issued bronze tokens.  They did 
not serve exactly same purpose as money in the western sense.


 >I suspect percentage-wise that gold has been chosen more often in history 
than 
> not.  
> 
Gold in all its history was used for large purchases.  You didn't sally into 
the pub in the middle ages and plop down gold coins to pay your tab.

While precious metal coinage probably accounts for most money-type 
transactions in history, the actual physical trafficking in gold was probably 
a very 
small percent of that.  

Also consider that of all the exchanges that take place in the world, money 
is probably used in the vast minority of the cases and always has been.