Blank discs of metal (flans) of the required weight were heated and placed between two dies. These were the bronze concave molds that had the designs for the coin’s sculptures carved in reverse. The smith would place the dies flat and strike the top one hard with a hammer to stamp the carved images onto the flan, producing the coin. This momentous technological advance was one impetus behind Ionian innovative thinking, and especially behind Anaximander’s abstract conception of the Unlimited, that things in the universe might be infinite and contained by no boundaries at all. Coins made the
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