Money! What a strange concept for a people that 200,000 years ago were trading what they had such as strength, speed, hard work or intelligence to a group of their kind for the right to exist.

Once these people matured enough to realize that they had a great abundance of certain things and a dangerous lack of other things the concept of trade was crafted. This of course was very hard because they not only had to conquer fear and distrust of trading partners but they had to come to an understanding of how to evaluate things. Since food was the one basic commodity that ruled most peoples needs it is no wonder that the first attempt to make a comprehensive and truly exchangeable money supply was measured in grains of weight and tied directly to the weight of grains of wheat.

Now throw into these early times the concepts of greed and politics and mysticism then you can understand why it took two hundred thousand years to get to where we are today. Or if you are a true cynic then you can say it is very understandable why we are where we are today.

Money in its very simplest form is just 'trust'. If I work for you for a day it is because I trust that the concept of money you pay me with will be trusted by the merchant selling loaves of bread that I buy on my way home. Take away that trust then it makes no difference at all if that concept is struck in gold or is a simple grain of sand.

As our world approaches seven billion in population we may see the most important commodities come full circle where the basics such as food and clean water will once again become the driving force for a money concept that can allow for a producer to make enough profit to make continued production possible and at the same time make sure that each and every one of those seven billion souls can afford the staples of life. That is the challenge but is our present concept of money up to that challenge?