If you are really curious about this, may I suggest you read an anthropologists investigation on economic systems in pre-historic (and early historic) times?

Graeber's book Debt the first 5000 years might be a good starting point.

added to my audible library thank you

We still have people who want to move us back to the gold standard. Certainly moving away from it came with plenty of controversy. I think there are a lot of parallels in general.

A lot of people still haven't fully internalized what it means for cash not to be tied to any particularly tangible item in terms of value.

Early money have always been things people believed to have intrinsic value. It started with carefully-measured containers of highest-value grains. Then gems and precious metals. It took thousands of years and support from people with guns to move to paper notes.

Chinese emperors had paper money before they had guns. The copper coins were too heavy to carry around in bulk.

but your main point stands, the paper money depended on the power of the state.

"guns" is figurative. They definitely had weapons of force....