The reader should note that in Alma 11:15 that things were measured in terms of "barley." According to Hugh Nibley, this is very interesting because the first Babylonian and the first Egyptian money were always the amount of silver necessary to buy a measure of barley. It was always barley. It wasn't emer wheat or the other grains they had. And it's very interesting that barley doesn't grow wild in Egypt as emer wheat and other things do. But barley was it. It was the word for money and it was what they used. . . . This reference to barley is very striking because nobody knew about this custom in Joseph Smith's day. It wasn't discovered until the 1850s. [Hugh W. Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 2, p. 317]