[groceries]

To me it seems more natural to assume that money would emerge from barter. Barter is only fair to a certain extent. As you (OP) mentioned, in bartering one party will "most likely always lose" while that isn't necessarily always true in pure black and white thinking eventually a barter system would become difficult to maintain in an economy (early or late). Now that would assume that one good or service in the exchange has more worth than the other end of the barter.

I see barter as an early, rugged form of money. Many early civilizations would trade goods such as cows or other animals in exchange for services or other goods. Technically those cows or whatever else WERE a currency. You could give someone 3 cows to help you do X, Y, Z. Replace cow with 300 gold coins and there isn't an enormous difference because each only has as much value as you allow it.

Eventually through barter you'd realize maybe you don't want to give all your cows away or perhaps people begin to realize that sure maybe now they have 3 cows since they did X, Y, Z for you but now the person they need stuff from doesn't need cows because they have 100 cows. Naturally I think currency (coin, paper money... etc) would develop from this to form a more "universal" token for barter so that it could then be more easily used by whoever receives it.

[sdenton4]

Read graeber. He this fallacious just so story quite thoroughly. in the old times happens pretty much only between tribes, in tense circumstances, not within them. Within a tribe, purposely ambiguous debt systems tend to be used. Also, there's a strong argument that money derives from ceremonial goods used to track the exchange of human lives, in marriage, murder, our slavery.