World Building _ Economics?

I am working on building a world for my 6th grade Social Studies class, in which they can practice building societies. But I want it to be realistic, Right now I want to concentrate on Economics, as that often determines the devleopment of a society.

But my question is this: How would an economy develop. I want to start at scratch, so that they can develop all the skills necessary to actually run a complex economy. So it has to be simple at first, but how to do it?

Help anyone?

Thanks

Darrel

 

Although I think this is the wrong forum for this, I would say that you would start the economy with the barter system. Start off with simple things like food, and clothing and things like that and eventually they can work their way up to a money system which is technically just a note that promise a portion of some precious material like gold.(technically a penny is worth a small portion of the us's gold depository).

 

Do like BoB suggested and begin with a barter system. Get a friend and work it out. Trade him three matches for two toothpicks, things like that. Then start developing problems...like maybe you don't want matches naymore, or he/she doesn't want toothpicks. What do you do then?

Log your actions and ideas, and take it to the next step. After the barter system, you develop whatever, and the problems with it were whatever... Log it all, put it all in your report, and see what you finally come up with.

You can develop alot more ideas than you would initially think, and it turns out alot differently than you would think as well.

Remember, your world doesn't need to turn out like ours...after all, it is YOUR world.

Good luck,
Maj-Odo Taji

 

An economy is a system by which a society determines how and for what purposes its resourses will be used. If you are starting a world from scratch, remember that the primnary goal of any lifeform is survival; all their abilities will be devoted to finding food and shelter. The first tools will be created to make these tasks easier. Some people will become more adept with certain tools while others become skilled with different tools; this leads to specialization. Only when one peraon is able to do something better than another is there a reason to trade, creating a market system based on the value of goods and resources. Proceed form there.