[kragen]

this is utter speculation; we don't have anywhere near the level of archaeological evidence about the social relations of 7th-century lydia necessary to make statements like this. no inscriptions survive in lydian from that century or the following century, except for the occasional graffito, plus of course words struck on coins. even from later in lydian history, we only have a few dozen texts of any length. the kings before gyges are quasi-mythical; we don't even know how kroisos, the most famous of gyges' successors spelled his own name. we don't know how kroisos's taxation system worked. we don't know if the peasantry was free or enslaved. we certainly don't have any contemporary accounts of social relations between soldiers and peasantry

however, we do know that rulers around the mediterranean were levying taxes and making war for thousands of years before the lydians started making specie into coins

[nickbauman]

Comment was not meant to cover Lydia; just generally how money emerged. And this is a "cartoon" version of the story.

[kragen]

we weren't talking about money; we were talking about 'Coins (specie that had a direct connection to a ruler, usually with the name or visage of the ruler struck on them)'

those specifically emerged in 7th century lydia, and that emergence is what the article is about