section_path: History of finance
section_name: History of finance
paragraph_text: History of finance
  
  The origin of finance can be traced to the beginning of state formation and trade during the Bronze Age. The earliest historical evidence of finance is dated to around 3000 BCE. Banking originated in West Asia, where temples and palaces were used as safe places for the storage of valuables. Initially, the only valuable that could be deposited was grain, but cattle and precious materials were eventually included. During the same period, the Sumerian city of Uruk in Mesopotamia supported trade by lending as well as the use of interest. In Sumerian, "interest" was mas, which translates to "calf". In Greece and Egypt, the words used for interest, tokos and ms respectively, meant "to give birth". In these cultures, interest indicated a valuable increase, and seemed to consider it from the lender's point of view. The Code of Hammurabi (1792–1750 BCE) included laws governing banking operations. The Babylonians were accustomed to charging interest at the rate of 20 percent per year. By 1200 BCE, cowrie shells were used as a form of money in China.
  
  The use of coins as a means of representing money began in the years between 700 and 500 BCE. Herodotus mentions the use of crude coins in Lydia around 687 BCE and, by 640 BCE, the Lydians had started to use coin money more widely and opened permanent retail shops. Shortly after, cities in Classical Greece, such as Aegina, Athens, and Corinth, started minting their own coins between 595 and 570 BCE. During the Roman Republic, interest was outlawed by the Lex Genucia reforms in 342 BCE, though the provision went largely unenforced. Under Julius Caesar, a ceiling on interest rates of 12% was set, and much later under Justinian it was lowered even further to between 4% and 8%.
  
  The first exchange happened in Belgium in 1531. Since then, popular exchanges such as the London Stock Exchange (founded in 1773) and the New York Stock Exchange (founded in 1793) were created.