Cowrie
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Cowrie or cowry is the common name for a group of small to large sea snails in the family Cypraeidae.
Cypraea caputserpentis
Cowrie (Cypraea chinensis) with fully extended mantle
Shells of various species of cowrie; all but one have their anterior ends pointing towards the top of this image.
A 1742 drawing of shells of the money cowrie, Monetaria moneta
Maldives
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The Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, and historically known as the Maldive Islands, is an archipelagic country in South Asia, located in the Indian Ocean, near the southeastern boundary
Cowrie
…various cultures. The cowrie was the shell most widely used worldwide as shell money. It is most abundant in the Indian Ocean and was collected near the Maldive Islands, Sri Lanka and the Indian Malabar coast, Borneo and other East Indian islands, Maluku in the Pacific, Papua New Guinea, and various parts of the African…
Isdhoo Lōmāfānu is the oldest copper-plate book to have been discovered in Maldives to date. The book was written in 1194 CE (590 AH) in the Evēla form of the Divehi akuru, during the reign of Siri Fennaadheettha Mahaa Radun (Dhinei Kalaminja).
Portuguese presence in Maldives was established in 1558, by order of Constantino of Braganza, Viceroy of Portuguese India.
16th-century Portuguese illustration from the Códice Casanatense, depicting workers
17th-century Portuguese drawing of the fortress of Maldives and the archipelago. In Antonio Bocarro's book of Fortress (1632)