When you think of money, the first image that comes into your head is probably a bank note. We all know what they look like and how you can use them. Bank notes are such a large part of our lives that it is hard to imagine how the world would work without them. That’s why it may surprise you to learn that the bank notes we know today are a relatively recent form of money.This isn’t to say that people only recently started buying and selling with each other. People have always traded goods and services. Before bank notes, however, almost all money was made of precious metals in the form of coins. We still have coins today, and they work in much the same way they have for thousands of years.