cowrie

音標(biāo)發(fā)音

A Moken tribesman in Myanmar's Andaman Islands displays two large cowrie shells.
緬甸安達(dá)曼群島上，一位莫肯族人手里展示了兩枚大貨貝。
Golden cowrie shells are among the hardest shells to find and are prized by collectors.
黃金寶螺的貝殼極難找到，它們?yōu)槭詹丶宜瞥纭?/li>
It is more likely that the beads were either simply fashionable throughout the region, or that they acted as currency, as cowrie shells did in some parts of Africa until historical times.
更有可能的是，在那整個(gè)時(shí)代中，珠子不是一種遍布大陸的流行，就是作為一種流通貨幣的角色（由于瑪瑙貝在歷史上曾經(jīng)在非洲的一部分被作為貨幣使用）。

Over the centuries, many things have served the purpose, from beads to cowrie shells to pigs.
ECONOMIST: Cash remains king
Congo's has a catanga cross (a large copper cross), while Equatorial Guinea has a pair of cowrie shells.
FORBES: Living People On Legal Tender

a small sea creature with a soft body and a brightly coloured shell, or the shell itself used in the past as money in parts of Africa and southern Asia

any marine gastropod mollusc of the mostly tropical family Cypraeidae, having a glossy brightly marked shell with an elongated opening