Welcome to the trade museum!!!!!
 
 

     BARTER

   The word barter comes form the French word barater meaning, “to trade”  

     As man satisfied his basic needs, his want to make hunting, building shelter, and access to water easier, grew.  Some people were good hunters, some were better gardeners, and some built huts faster.  That was the begining of barter.
An example of early barter is a man would trade ten rabbits for a man to build him a hut.  This worked for a little while.  However people needing huts couldn’t always carry around ten rabbits. They needed something easier and smaller.  So people started using beads, shells, small animals, and crops as early forms of money.  Later money evolved into crude lumps of different metals.  Now people needing huts could pay the builder a given number of those lumps in exchange for a hut.  Very soon people got picky about how many lumps they spent because it was getting harder for them to find such metals, and they wanted to know if their trade is fair.  An example would be, a woman wants  thirty-one lbs. of rice for a stew.  She could not have any more or any less, but she only had a large lump and a small lump.  She knew that she could not break them and it would not be fair to one or the other if she gave the owner of the rice the big one or the small one. What to do!  Next, people started stamping those lumps into coins only a little bigger than our present-day half-dollar coin.  They were only made of certain metals and were given a value.  People knew how many of those coins they needed for a certain thing, but all of those coins could get heavy fast.  Because of that, people started using paper money which soon brings us to present-day banks and things like that.  Now money is a very important part of our everyday lives whether we know it or not!
 
 
 
 
 

                                Pop Quiz

      All you have to do is tell Mega Money if the trade
being offered is fair or unfair.
 

1.  Bob offered M.M. (Mega Money) a 5 cent baseball card for a 5 cent
football card.                                  1.  fair
                                                      2.  unfair
 
2.  Tom offered M.M. a small piece of granite from his backyard for a
diamond ring.
                                                       1. fair
                                                       2. unfair
 
3.   Jannie offered M.M. a banana for an apple.

                                                       1. fair
                                                       2. unfair
 
4.  Jack and Jill will give M.M. a $3 book for a $100 stereo.
                                                       1. fair
                                                       2. unfair
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