Barbarian hoard - Telegraph An astonishing hoard of 50,000 Iron Age coins has been unearthed in Jersey. They are thought to have been hidden from the European power of the time, Caesar's Rome. Being silver, they had an intrinsic value. Many bear heads with strange haircuts - perhaps representing Iron Age bond-holders who had unwisely invested in the debts of the Aedui and the Segusiavi, the Veneti, the Senones and the Aulerci, all economies operating at different speeds in Gaul. In future millennia, archaeologists might come across great piles of discarded discs marked "euro." What, they may wonder, could these unheard-of tokens be? Of copper, zinc, nickel, aluminium and tin, their intrinsic value will be marginal. Perhaps, future historians might speculate, these were used as some kind of propaganda rather than as currency, a passing fad, like cathode-ray tubes and compact discs.