Keith,

I trust we agree that Michael is confusing gold bullion used as money with
actual gold coin.  Payments by weight in gold, silver and copper “bullion”
were all routinely being used in various places by around 2000 BC.  Coin is
very specifically to do with making the metal into a form efficiently and
rapidly usable for smaller payments.  Happens around 610 BC, first
specifically mentioned c. 460 BC as far as I know

I am a fan of Percy Ure, much of my suggestion was originally put up by him
in 1922 (Origins of Tyranny - now free on the web).  Ure was a classicist 
with a sense of humour, if you track his footnotes etc, he seems to want to
make William Jennings Bryan a kind of reincarnation of Peisistratos. 
Certain his case is that coin issue was a strengthening of the position of
the small man against big business in Ancient Greece.  Which raises the
question, why did Finley and Polanyi ignore what Ure had earlier put?  I
have been tracking the funding streams and associations of Finley and
Polanyi for 20 years now, and new troubling revelations keep on appearing.

Thinking about the Lydian invention of coin – the metallurgy (salt
cementation etc) was already about 1,500 years old.  Commercial stamp seals
already 3,000+ years old.  Exact official weight systems for metals were
already 1,500+ years old.  Markets, and use of metal for payments - already
1,500+ years old.  What was there to invent?

The idea that coins were created to pay mercenaries too is just speculation,
popular around Finley’s associates, such as Kraay.  That idea was very
effectively criticised by Howgego (1995)

Of course I agree we are all forced to speculate.  The facts that most
impress me are that throughout the subsequent historical periods of coin
use, reactionary elites very regularly seem to intervene to curb coin issue
and market access for the general population.  And radical reformers equally
regularly appear to reverse the tendency.  Looking for a similar pattern
just before history starts seems to me a legitimate application of Occam’s razor

Rob Tye, York, UK