歐亞白銀重探──錢幣學上的新發現

New numismatics findings, in association with existing knowledge on coins in medieval Central and West Asia, strengthen the hypothesis, raised by me in 2009, that a large quantity of silver ingots of Chinese origin reached the western half of Eurasia, as far as London, around 1280, 1300 and 1350. The three peaks coincide with the establishment or resumption of sending tributes from the appanages, touxia (投下), in proper China possessed by western Khanates. The metal format for printing local paper monies in terms of silk with the date 1250 in north China, recently found, proves that the Mongols did not yet stick to silver usage at that time. Numismatics evidences from Transoxania and Iran show that after the 1270s, silvers of high fineness were substituted with coins of billon and silver-coated copper. The forms and weights of 65 silver bars unearthed from the remains (1340 -1360) at Orheiul Vechi, Moldavia, in 2007 strongly suggest that tributes in silver from the appanages in China surely reached the fortress of the Kipchap Khanate.