Trade is as old as humanity itself. Long-distance commerce is according to some sources at least 150,000 years old. It is ten times older than farming. Most types of food and perishables could be only traded locally, preferred were durable goods with large value for a small weight. Some of them have begun to be used as money, examples as diverse as cattle, seashells, beads, nails, tobacco, cotton, and so on; but since the 17th century the most common forms have been metal coins, paper notes, and bookkeeping entries. The wide use of cattle as money in primitive times survives in the words like pecuniary (coming from the Latin pecus, meaning cattle) and fee (Old English feoh, ‘cattle owned’, still used as livestock in German Vieh).