More or less the whole world has become used to all-purpose money. All-purpose money relies on people agreeing that various pieces of paper and coins have a certain value. Most items that are exchanged in modern societies have a monetary value. Even the monetary value of people's lives can be calculated by actuarial accountants.

The printing of money is regulated by the federal governments of modern nations. They spend a great deal of resources on determining the amount of money that should be in circulation, mainly in order to avoid inflation or deflation. While it is impossible to imagine modern life with all-purpose money, it has a fairly short history in human society.

Human history has played out for tens of thousand of years without special-purpose money. In order to describe the situation before the advent of all-purpose money, anthropologists have developed the concept of multicentric economies.

Multicentric economies are characterized by different spheres. These spheres include certain material items and might be guided by different principles of exchange and moral value. People in a multicentric economy divide the items they want to exchange into two or three categories. These categories typically have a long tradition. They cannot be changed by individuals, only through societal transformations. For example, the Tiv of northern Nigeria had established three different spheres before the British colonization.

According to University Professor Paul Bohannan's research, the Tiv people put locally produced foodstuffs such as produce and animals into one category. Prestige goods such as slaves, cattle, a large white cloth know as lugudu, and metal bars comprised the second category. Human beings, particularly rights in women and children, belonged to a third category.

The three spheres were arranged in hierarchical order. People wanted to exchange up in order to increase their status. Rights in women and children were most prestigious. In order to exchange items from one category to the next, the Tiv used brass rods. However, - and in contrast to all-purpose money – brass rods were not considered a standard gauge against which the exchange value of other commodities could be reckoned.

Essentially, only because one farmer received five brass rods for a cattle and used the rods to acquire a wife did not mean that his neighbor could do the same. The number of brass rods used in an exchange transaction depended on many factors. The use of brass rods served in no way as a unit of account, a store of value, or a standard of deferred payment, all of which are characteristics of our modern all-purpose money.

Nevertheless, when the British "pacified" the Tiv at the beginning of the twentieth century, they considered brass rods to be currency. They replaced brass rods with pounds, shillings, and pence. Thereby, they applied concepts of all-purpose money that were not part of the Tiv world. In the process of pacification, the spheres of exchange were practically destroyed and widespread societal changes occurred.

Few would want to give up all-purpose money and use special-purpose money instead. But it is important to know that humans have existed for hundred thousands, or even millions of years, without it.