What's behind this? Cultural diffusion? Why the cowry? How widespread is the natural range of this cowry organism? How can something that occurs naturally have value as currency? Wouldn't that mean that people who lived near the shore have more power?

Well, this is not a problem. After all, gold, silver and diamonds also occurs naturally. How does it get into currency is another thing. It must be useful for some purpose, easy to store and transport and difficult to fake. The cowry shell fits into that. I get that the "original" use of it was probably jewellery, as the case of gold and silver.

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http://www.mbad.org/cowrie.htm

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Interesting read.

From some other sites I gain that cowries originate in the Maldive islands in India, and have been valued since prehistoric times in places as diverse as West Africa and China. They're described as the most widely circulated currency in history.

Here's an interesting paragraph from http://www.ifama.com/page7.html ...

"Though it has become one of the symbols of the African continent, it is fact that the cowrie played such an important role as money in ancient China that its pictograph was adopted in their written language for money. Thus it is not surprising that among the earliest countable metallic money or coins were cowries made of bronze or copper, in China."

I guess the cowrie is one thing that a lot of ancient civilizations had in common.

Curiously, my casual google search found no info on cowrie use in ancient mesopotamia nor in ancient greece... Anyone know much about that?

I remember seeing a poster of a Somali girl with a necklace and armlets of cowry...

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Didn't Egyptian girls and women wear laces of cowery for fertility?
I remember seeing a poster of a Somali girl with a necklace and armlets of cowry...

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Not sure of the fertility purpose, but from what I read so far, it seems cowrie shells were often used for magic in general, especially divination. Maybe that's how they first became valuable for trade.

Pennies from heaven? Quel magie! I ask for coweries - I get coweries! (LOL!) Afro-Egyptian wampum... How shall I spend them? Let me count the ways...

Or - could I trade them even up for a menat cluster? Hmmmm...?? Something tells me that might not be possible. Maybe ausar knows the value?

I could barter a few scans for some good advice...

And I see you now have a way of getting those graphics across, Djehuti. Good show!