That’s what I once thought. As I mentioned, David Graeber makes an argument using archeological and anthropomorphic evidence that barter and money came to be at the same time and barter was never a large amount of activity. If you have specific evidence to counter Graeber’s I’d love to read it. I personally never want to barter. I’d rather just give it to someone and leave it up to them to do me a favor later (which he discusses). Further, we do treat money as he describes, but I won’t get lost in weeds here!

Yes, many economists still subscribe to the barter-then-money theory. I don’t. The evidence is circumstantial at best.