Archaeologists have discovered what they believe is the oldest-known coin mint, where miniature, shovel-shaped bronze coins were mass produced some 2,600 years ago
The Guanzhuang mint, Zhao says, “is currently the world’s oldest-known securely dated minting site.”
To mint a spade coin, craftsmen made two outer molds and a core out of clay, then carved the cavity and the “sprue”—a channel for pouring the molten metal . The molds were then bound together with cord and core pins were inserted to create a thin void . Molten bronze would then be poured through the sprue until the level reached the boundary line between the core head and the body . After the bronze cooled, the outer molds would be broken to remove the finished spade coin.
Coins are typically discovered isolated or hoarded away from where they were made, stashed in the rafters of a house or buried in a hole in the ground, Maurer says, “completely divorced from any sort of context that you can definitively say was associated with the coins themselves.” But here, “you've got a foundry which is full of carbon residue associated with the production of the item itself,” Maurer says, which can prove how old the coins and mint actually are., director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute, says that while the discovery is impressive, “It doesn't change our basic understanding of when the first coins were produced. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that China did it first.
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