Every currency has a history.
This atlas follows currencies through replacement, regional branching and changes in their monetary basis. Each connection leads to the evidence behind it.
Start with your currency
Search by name or code, or choose a history on the map. A profile introduces the currency, shows its ancestry journey and explains the turning points. Follow the full journey to explore earlier predecessors and later successors. Open Evidence to inspect individual claims and named sources.
Find a currency →Browse sources →
Read the connections
Time runs from left to right, with a compressed scale. Solid connections are documented; dashed connections are qualified or uncertain. The uncertainty belongs to that connection. It does not automatically apply to every descendant.
Every admitted ancestry connection is drawn directly between the related currencies, including across browsing bands. Select a line to inspect its evidence. The Overview opens focused family maps; the complete atlas remains available for a view of every connection. A historical line without a recorded successor may reflect unfinished research; it does not establish that the family died out. Colors follow eight named branches through the admitted ancestry connections, including qualified ones; grey includes other branches and convergence. Neutral bands remain only on the complete atlas. Focused views follow named ancestry branches and show actual connected currencies at their boundaries. Color never supplies a missing link.
Hover or focus a currency to follow every displayed connection backward to its predecessors and forward to its successors. The two walks stay separate: an ancestor’s other descendants and a successor’s other predecessors are not pulled into the highlight. Enlarged histories retain the documented ancestors of every currency they display.
Long vertical connectors are thin and faint so they do not overwhelm the currency tracks. Hover or focus a currency to emphasize its full lineage, or use Emphasize connections to show every connector at full strength. Faintness is a layout treatment; solid and dashed strokes still distinguish documented and qualified relationships.
Historical tracks may show dated observations rather than a complete lifetime. Current-currency tracks extend to the atlas’s reference year, 2026. Exact dates and qualifications belong on the profiles.
Choose your view
Start with a currency, explore a named branch, or open the complete atlas. The euro convergence shows every direct input, including later entrants. Other monetary histories remain full entries even when their connections are unresolved.
Focused diagrams show dated evidence or transitions, not a census of currencies alive in each year. The Overview’s river width counts cumulative dated histories, using the same lineage totals as its buttons. It does not estimate currencies circulating at a given date; family pages distinguish histories from currencies still in use.
Changing monetary anchors
A currency can adopt another unit or a defined monetary anchor while retaining its earlier history. Profiles and the anchor register explain the ratio, duration, and limits; secondary anchor lines are hidden in the main trees. Sharing an anchor does not establish shared ancestry.
What makes a descendant?
A connection needs evidence of succession, transmitted accounting or the development of a distinct account unit. Explicit account transmission can support qualified ancestry even where the exact conversion and intermediate stages are unknown. A familiar name, similar coin design or exchange-rate equivalence alone is insufficient. Coins and banknotes illustrate a currency; a new issue does not automatically create a new branch.
Adoption of an already existing currency is different from founding ancestry. The retiring currency’s profile records the conversion; it does not become a parent of the receiving currency. The euro confluence preserves founding conversions and later accessions as distinct events.
A gap means that ancestry is not established here. It does not prove that the currency had no predecessor. Unsupported links remain outside the main tree.
For researchers
Claim identifiers, corrected interpretations and source-access limits remain available. Separate research pages preserve the reasoning behind earlier decisions.
Download the research dataset ↓ · Latest research report →
Methodology and research coverage →
Origins of coinage
Lydian staters and early electrum coinage introduce the evidence for the first coins and the limits of tracing their descendants.
Copyright and credits
© 2026 Field Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Field Technologies, Inc. is the copyright holder for the atlas’s original text, design, code, graphics and compilation. Third-party publications, quotations, images and other source materials remain subject to their respective rights and credits. Historical facts and public-domain materials are not claimed as exclusive property.
Keyboard access
Press / to search. In the complete interactive atlas, focus the map and use arrow keys to pan, + and − to zoom, and 0 to reset. In focused family diagrams, use Tab to reach currencies and connections; focus highlights ancestry, and Pin a highlight keeps a selection active. Names and relationship controls are keyboard accessible. Escape closes a dialog.