Of all the shells used as ancient currency, cowrie shells have been the most common shell media and are probably the oldest in usage for exchange.

Although widely distributed throughout the Indo-Pacific, the Maldive and Laccadive islands supplied Cypraea moneta for most of the world's trade until the 18th Century.

The Maldivians had developed a simple and highly efficient means of collecting the shells: Bundles of coconut palm leaves are laid out in shallow lagoons. The cowries aggregate on them, probably because they like to feed on the layers of detritus that accumulate on the leaves. After some time, the bundles are pulled out onto the beach. The cowries die in the hot sun and get shaken off onto the sand. They are then buried in a pit until the flesh rots away, leaving clean empty shells to be retrieved.

The Maldives were noted as the center of the cowry trade over a period of 4000 years, from the earliest records of Arab merchants to the accounts of adventurers and later European visitors.

The shells were carried from the Maldives to the Mediterranean by Arab traders. They were transported across the Sahara and further to Europe by competing Portuguese, Dutch, English and French traders for onward transport to the West African coast. They served to purchase the slaves exported to the New World. The Europeans were surprised that the natives preferred cowrie shells over gold coins.
Cowries probably arrived in Africa by the 10th century and possibly earlier, preceding European colonization by hundreds of years.

Cowries have been found in tombs of predynastic Egypt, c.5000 BC, likewise in those of Shang China, c.1500 BC. They also circulated throughout India, Afghanistan, Iran, Southeast Asia, China, and Melanesia. Cowries were placed in graves as unlikely as prehistoric Latvia and Anglo-Saxon England, and were known and sought by Native Americans before the European Invasion. In China, from 1200-800 BC, cowrie shells were important valuables and in India cowries have been found in association with coins from sites dating from the first century AD.

Cowries were highly prized as a means of exchange for several of the same reasons that modern cowries are valued: they are durable, difficult to forge and have a limited source of supply. They have also been used as jewelry, dowry and fertility symbols.

The value of the cowrie varied widely with time, place, demand, and supply.
A few examples can indicate the range: Togo, l896: 4000 = 1 German mark Inland Tanzania, 1880s: 4-5000= 1 Maria Theresia thale Congo, c. 1900: 30-60,000 = a male slave New Guinea highlands, 1924 5 = 1 small pig

Though single cowries have served as small change and gambling, most trade was conducted in bulk.

They were imitated or at times substitued by cheaper shells causing inflation.

Bone cowries are not uncommon antiquities in China, and it is generally assumed that the "ant and nose" coins are cowrie derivatives. There is a school of thought that sees a cowrie model for the original lumpy Greek coinage. Gold cowries have been found in Ancient Cypriot graves, bronze specimens in Etruscan tombs. Nowadays, cowries are simply beautiful shells.