How did the ancient broken silver come from?

On this topic, let's take a look at these things first:

Sub-scale is a tool for measuring weight invented by Liu (reportedly) in Song Dynasty.

It belongs to a small scale. It is a precise weighing instrument, which was specially used to weigh gold, silver, precious drugs and spices in the old days. The dividing value (measuring accuracy) is one centimeter, which is equivalent to 3 1.25mg today. (All barnacles are designed according to 1 kg, which is equal to 16).

This is a set of tools used by silversmiths. When cutting silver, you should focus on knives, hammers, scissors and chisels.

Uh-huh, now let's get down to business.

Silver, regardless of whether there are fakes to add other things to increase the weight, let's assume that the ancients are simply cute. . . . . And we only talk about "face value".

"the store! Cut two Jin of cooked beef first, then take two jiao of wine, and I'll give you the money right away. "

Don't tell me how much a catty of beef weighs. Can I eat it? Anyway, a catty was only about 250 grams in ancient times. )

Wolf down the meal, wipe your mouth and leave. Jianghu children should be so free and easy!

"I owe you seven taels of silver" (don't worry about the price, I only did it for convenience)

Hero took out a silver cake (suppose twelve taels, I'm really too lazy to count sixteen taels =. =)。 . . . . .

Come on, let's smash the silver.

Cut it down, slap it and weigh it,

Oh, no, only six taels.

One more knife, one more hammer, seven and a half

. . . . . .

With the unremitting efforts of the shopkeeper, the shopkeeper got an income of six two plus one two equals seven two.

Hero, there are two and a half plus half two in the change.

Jianghu children still need change, shouldn't they give it to the bartender or something?

Well, bits and pieces of silver appear = =

Why not glistening silver? . . . . . )

There is also a description of cutting silver in A Dream of Red Mansions:

Baoyu said, "Just choose a big one for him. What are you doing if you don't do business? " She Yue put down her hoe, picked a piece and weighed it. "I'm afraid this piece is one or two," she said with a smile. More is better than less, which makes the poor boy laugh. It's not that we don't know anything, but that we are small-minded. The woman stood on the stone bench outside and said with a smile, "That's a five-tael spindle with half of it. There are at least two in this piece! There is no editing now, girl. Take this and pick a smaller one. "

Since there was broken silver, a kind of shop was born, that is, the silver shop.

The silver shop is a private shop for casting silver ingots. Specially for customers to divide large ingots into small ingots or melt broken silver into large ingots.

"Wake up and say that the oilseed monopolizes the flowers": "Take an oil umbrella and go to the opposite silver shop to borrow the silver from the balance treasure."

Lu Wuhan Stubborn Shoes: "There is no money at home, so we have to pour these two ingots of white silver into a silver shop, hoping to add some silver water."

However, in the ancient reality, only large-scale trade would be settled with silver. The poor, who were deeply poisoned by feudalism, still used copper coins every day. Although the purchasing power of copper coins is different with the change of dynasties and other social factors, it cannot change its function as a basic currency (just as the existence of a dollar is still meaningful)