Money has three main functions, it is used as a medium of exchange, as a unit of account and as a means of hoarding. The origin of money came from the need for a universal means of exchange. Since then, money has been an integral part of our society and fulfills an important role in society.

 
In ancient times there was no money and people did business based on barter. A group of hunters who had just caught a mammoth could exchange meat for, say, fresh blueberries from a group of berry pickers. Thus, barter could take place on a small scale. This form of trade became increasingly limited, however, because not all means of exchange were equally liquid. For example, a farmer could hardly trade a pig; the meat is perishable and you can only slaughter the entire beast, leaving you with a large amount of meat in one fell swoop. In addition, the demand for products was not always large and constant, so you quickly ended up with illiquid means of exchange. Items that did not satisfy a primary necessity of life were less easily tradable. A stone cutter who wanted to sell his stones was therefore much more dependent on market conditions than a hunter offering meat for barter. A number of items, in addition, were impractically difficult to trade. Think of heavy sacks of flour.
 
One of the first universal means of payment is salt, which used to be very precious. Thus, Roman soldiers were paid their salaries in salt. The Latin name of salt, “sal,” is the origin of the word salary, which means as much as “salt stock.” The disadvantages of salt as a means of payment are that it had to be stored well (dry) to retain its value, and in addition, salt near the sea - where it was more easily mined - is less valuable than inland.
 
People also traded things that had a fixed and universal value, such as shells, spices and metals. A condition for achieving a well-traded unit was that they were durable goods that could be easily distributed. Precious metals thus increasingly took on a function as a medium of exchange. The advantage of precious metals such as gold and silver was that these metals could not spoil like meat and grain. The role of gold and silver as money was accepted internationally, thus the first universal money was born.