[claudiawerner]

>Humans must solve the problem of "coincidence of wants" (ie. You raise chickens and I'm a woodworker - do we always need each other's goods?).

The fact that this must be solved in an exchange economy does not mean that it is the same as the genesis of money. Every historical economist has had a theory as to the genesis of money, from Smith, Ricardo and Marx to Mises. To say that money evolved as a solution to the problem of the coincidence of wants may not be correct. Solving the coincidence of wants may just be a side effect.

[einpoklum]

The article indicates that that problem did not really exist. If you don't have to barter, you don't need a mutual coincidence of wants. If economic activity is to a greater extent a group activity, than there's a community of wants. etc. If anything, the discreteness of wants is an engineered phenomenon, or at least the result of developments of different social orders with a different position of the individual.