Quote from: Arcavum on April 08, 2013, 12:25:56 PM

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Gold was it for a while because it possessed most of the desirable qualities of moneyness.

...Which in layman's terms means "Ooooooooooo shiny"

I honestly don't see how some people can dispute evolution when they're a walking contradiction.

Hmm. Well, if we're going to be serious for a moment: At first there were surely plenty of people who traded gold for whatever (labor, salt, ??) because they wanted the shiny. But it only became accepted and preferred as money for properties like being hard to counterfeit, relatively plentiful, and identical worth between traders (ie, an ounce is an ounce whether from a pretty girl or a shabby, sick hobo... not the same for the aforementioned blowjobs, or more interestingly, for brand-new cloth, foodstuffs, etc.)

Not many things really meet these criteria. Other elements, but gold is nicely in the middle of availability cross-continents, soft enough to subdivide, "easy" to verify. Platinum falls short without more recent tech, as does diamonds and other shinies. Really, you only have elements to choose from, and maybe crystalline forms of them, to consider if you are creating a monetary standard even a few hundred years ago.