Can you please post some links or comment about some of the other theories on the orgin of money or is the austrian approach accepted by most economists?
There were a few recent posts about David Graeber's theory that money was created by fiat by central authorities. He presents half of the evidence and then says there's no evidence for the other side. He claims there is no evidence for barter existing in early civilizations which is utter horseshit. There are depictions of markets in art in the 5th dynasty of Egypt. There were early markets across the fertile crescent. He also relies only on the written record, of course that's the easy path for his argument. This is obviously fallacious and suspect because most people did not know how to write and probably would not bother with keeping a record of every trade and transaction that they conducted. Graeber also claims that those who subscribe to the Mengerian account of the origin of money have been ignoring all of the anthropological evidence available. He's again being sophistic since the anthropological evidence is that multiple types of trade coexisted in most early civilizations. He also must disregard the fact that price controls had to be imposed in ancient times. People didn't just abide by these peacefully and people had to be killed or punished in some way to follow them. That is, if they were ever caught. Regardless, these attempts at price controls did not work, ever.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1715223
and then if you can get this,
Dove, M.R. (1983). Theories of swidden agriculture, and the political economy of ignorance. Agroforestry Systems, 1(2), 85-99.
I have not read much on it, but I believe Menger and Mises contributed to the work.
Look up things like Monerary regression theorem.