756 money and coinage: Asia and the Pacific Coins offered several advantages over barter They were easier to move than grain and livestock The state guaranteed the quality and amount of metals in coins Coinage allowed the state to take more control of commercial transactions, which served to increase the power of nations Despite these advantages, coins were still not perfect They were not standardized from state to state Most early series of coins did not include small denominations, so they were useless for small transactions Historians believe that the first coins were used mainly for large payments by states to armies or other states Early coin making was a laborious process Mints first made blanks—blank coins of the correct size and weight but with no marks on them—by pouring molten metal into a clay mold Most of the earliest coins were made of electrum, but the gold component of the alloy soon became too expensive, and most cities and states switched to silver coins Minters took great care to ensure that their molds were the right size and that the molten metal contained the correct combination of ores The mint would then make the blanks into actual coins by imprinting it with dies made of iron or bronze; they would place the blank in the die and strike it with a hammer The die would leave an image on the coin, such an eagle or a king’s head The minters would then engrave the back side by hand Sometimes mints remade old coins with new dies, stamping the old coins with new images instead of making fresh blanks Most ancient coins were rather rough; they were usually not perfectly round, and the edges of the die used to mark them could be clearly seen within their borders During the 200s c.e Middle Eastern minting techniques improved, and coins became much thinner and flatter During Roman times Roman coins were legal tender in much of the Mediterranean world By the first century b.c.e Roman coins were accepted throughout Greece, western Turkey, and the Levant and in many places farther east as well During the Roman Republic (509-27 b.c.e.) the main Roman coins were called the sestertius and the denarius During the Roman Empire, lasting until 476 c.e., the common coins were the aureus and the denarius Romans also minted coins customized to individual localities For example, in Asia Minor Romans minted coins called cistopori In Syria they made local coins called tetradrachms Individual provinces continued to mint their own coins as well; most of these coins were made of bronze, and people knew how much they were worth in relation to Roman coins ASIA AND THE PACIFIC BY Silver coins of various cultures found at Persepolis, Persia (modernday Iran) (Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago) KIRK H BEETZ Barter never entirely disappeared in ancient Asia and Oceania because many people lived outside the countries that developed cash economies Furthermore, in hard economic times, people often ventured outside cash economies to trade on their own through barter The desire to attach an objective value to goods developed in Asia sometime before 1500 b.c.e By that time the Vedic culture that was moving into north-