Before there were coins, there was debt. Before there was paper money, there were clay tablets. In this special episode of The India

Financial Pulse, we trace the five-thousand-year story of money — from the credit systems of ancient Sumer to the cowrie shells that served as currency across

three continents, from the first minted coins of Lydia to the paper notes of the Song Dynasty, and all the way to the digital currencies reshaping finance

today. Along the way, we unpack the ideas that explain how money actually works: why the value of a currency is tied to the strength of the state that issues

it, what really happened when Nixon took the dollar off gold in nineteen seventy one, and why Modern Monetary Theory is challenging everything we thought we

knew about government spending. This is not just economic history. It is the story of trust.