Long before cryptocurrencies, the mobile payments and investments in the Stock Market, the economy of an area was based on exchanging a surplus good for another that was needed. Until the appearance of coins and banknotes, barter was the only known form of trade. A new study suggests that the germ of what we know today as the European economic system appeared at the end of the Bronze Age, thanks to the popularization of a measurement system and countless bronze fragments that functioned as currency.
