This undated handout photo obtained January 20, 2021 shows Bronze age axe heads and rings from the Carsdorf Hoard, taken at the Natural History Museum, Leipzig, Germany. WASHINGTON: Central Europeans of the Bronze Age used bronze rings, ribs and axe blades that were roughly standardized in their shape and weight as an early form of"euros," according to a new study .
But since ancient people lacked precise forms of measurement, archaeologists had disagreed about whether bronze items discovered in"hoards" in modern day Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and other places were really currency, or just metal blocks for melting into other products. Lead author Maikel Kuijpers, an assistant professor in European Prehistory, told AFP the research was based on a new methodology he had developed"that is more attuned to how people would weigh items in the Bronze Age".He and his co-author Catalin Popa studied more than 5,000 objects from over 100 ancient hoards.
This quantifies the concept that if objects are similar enough in mass, people weighing them by hand can't tell the difference.
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