I don't normally recommend David Graeber's book, Debt. But this is one topic that it was actually really good on. It talks about the way people traded when money was scarce, which is most of human history in most places.

There's a lot of valid criticism of the book so I would maybe check out the wikipedia entry on it to get the outlines of the debate and to help read it critically b/c Graeber is a great writer and he's can be very convincing if you're only getting his side of the story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years