9 research outputs found
Rhythm and models of the cardinal, cultural and technological destructions after metal discovery
Centro de Informacion y Documentacion Cientifica (CINDOC). C/Joaquin Costa, 22. 28002 Madrid. SPAIN / CINDOC - Centro de Informaciòn y Documentaciòn CientìficaSIGLEESSpai
The Carbonate Massif of Voskresenka Mount in the Southern Pre-Urals: Age and Development of the Submerged Carbonate Platform
Geochemical Monitoring of Dust Fallout from the Highway Using a Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer
Origins, Homelands and Migrations: Situating the Kura-Araxes Early Transcaucasian 'Culture' within the History of Bronze Age Eurasia
Landscape Changes during the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition and Range Dynamics of Large Herbivorous Mammals of Northern Asia
Why Coins Turned Round the World Over? A Critical Analysis of the Origins and Transmission of Ancient Metallic Money
The inspiration behind the pre-modern bronze round coinage standardised across China by the First Emperor of Qin in the 3rd century BC have remained fairly obscure and are still a contentious issue. We demonstrate in this article that the various theories arguing for an exclusively endogenous impetus behind the spread and development of Chinese round coinage vouched for by many scholars in either East Asia or the West all carry inherent contradictions. In contrast, circumstantial and archaeological evidence in support of partly exogenous origins are mounting. Evidence from the Middle East points to the early invention and wide circulation of round coinage in Lydia, Greece and the Achaemenid Empire. The expansion of the Persians into India in the 6th century BC and the later incursions by Alexander and the Greco-Bactrians in the fourth and third centuries BC all facilitated and may have decisively contributed to India's adoption of round coinage. Similarly, the flow of ideas, artistic motifs and metallurgic knowhow from West Asia to China via Central Asia had occurred much earlier than the 3rd century BC. Active adoption of foreign (Central Eurasian steppe) customs in the fourth century BC is recorded in Chinese pre-imperial records and confirmed by recent archaeological findings across Eurasia. Ongoing archaeological work in China's western provinces could further highlight this ancient phase of globalization that, quite literally, still shapes our most fundamental grasp of money