--- title: Writing, laws and money: how strangers learned to trust each other — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Writing, laws and money: how strangers learned to trust each other», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Jack's friend says writing was invented in one place and everyone copied the ABC. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / Writing, laws and money: how strangers… # Writing, laws and money: how strangers learned to trust each other Lesson 63 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 20 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/0/) — Jack's friend says writing was invented in one place and everyone copied the ABC. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/1/) — Wren's friend adds that peoples without writing had no laws, just chaos. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/4/) — And many peoples kept laws in memory, speeches and objects, like the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace, remembered with belts of shell beads called wampum. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/5/) — Think of lending a friend a sticker: you trust them because you know them. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/6/) — With strangers you need more: written promises, laws everyone can see, fair weights on the scales, and money that both sides accept. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/7/) — Money did not have to be coins. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/8/) — People paid in grain, silver weighed on scales and cowrie shells. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/9/) — Jayden's aunt says the school story of «first barter, then money» is «lowkey contested», which means scholars quietly but really disagree about it. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/10/) — Ancient people moaned like us too. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/11/) — A clay tablet from Ur, about 3,750 years old, is a customer's angry letter about bad copper. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/12/) — When Liam asks who made the first coin, his Geordie gran says «ask Google, pet»: pet is how people in north-east England say love or dear. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/13/) — Writing was invented separately in Mesopotamia about 5,200 years ago, in China over 3,000 years ago, and in Mexico and Central America over 2,000 years ago; whether Egypt's writing was separate is debated. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/14/) — Around 1820 only about one adult in eight in the world could read, mostly priests, scribes, merchants and nobles; today nearly nine in ten can. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/16/) — The story that people first swapped goods and then invented money is contested: scholars have found few, if any, communities that lived by swapping alone, and neighbours more often lent, gave and remembered debts. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/17/) — Cowrie shells were used as money for hundreds of years in parts of Africa, India and China; in early Mesopotamia people paid in grain or silver weighed on scales. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/18/) — The first known coins were made in Lydia, in what is now Turkey, around 600 BCE; coins appeared in China and India around the same time. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/19/) — A ruler's stamp on a coin promised its weight, so traders did not need to weigh metal every time. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/21/) — A clay tablet from Ur, about 3,750 years old, holds a letter from a man called Nanni complaining to the trader Ea-nasir about poor copper and rude treatment. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/22/) — Kings and cities set standard weights and measures so buyers were not cheated; France created the metric system in the 1790s, and most of the world now uses it. - [23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/63-writing-laws-and-money-how-strangers-learned-to-trust-each-other/23/) — Many peoples kept laws without writing: the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace was remembered with wampum belts, and Somali clans used xeer, a law kept by elders. - ← previous: [Everyday inventions: pots, boats, wheels, horses, clocks and glasses](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/62-everyday-inventions-pots-boats-wheels-horses-clocks-and-glasses/) - next →: [Learning through the ages: schools, universities, libraries and science](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/64-learning-through-the-ages-schools-universities-libraries-and-science/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)