The auction method of marketing is one of the oldest ways in history of converting assets, either real estate or personal property, into cash. *The earliest known reference to the auction comes to us from the Histories of Herodotus.  Herodotus was born between 480 and 490 BC at Halicarnassus on the south-west coast of Asia Minor, and he has described the history of his times to such great effect that he has been called by Cicero and others "the father of history".  In a section devoted to a description of Babylonian customs at about the year 500 BC he writes as follows:

In every village once a year all the girls of marriageable age were collected together in one place, while the men stood around them in a circle; an auctioneer then called each one in turn to stand up and offered her for sale, beginning with the best-looking and going on to the second best as soon as the first had been sold for a good price.  Marriage was the object of the transaction.  The rich men who wanted wives bid against each other for the prettiest girls, while the humbler folk, who had no use for good looks in a wife, were actually paid to take the ugly ones.  The money came from the sale of the beauties, who in this way provided dowries for their ugly or misshapen sisters.  It was illegal for a man to marry his daughter to anyone he happened to fancy, and no one could take home a girl he had bought without first finding a backer to guarantee his intention of marrying her.  In cases of disagreement between husband and wife the law allowed the return of the purchase money.  Anyone who wished could come even from a different village to buy a wife.

The word 'auction' is from the Latin 'auctio' which means increase.  This is not always the case.  In national and historical terms methods other that the ascending bid method include the Dutch or upside-down auction, famous for auctioning millions of dollars worth of flowers each week.  Or auction by inch of a candle and the Japanese method of simultaneous bidding, used in auctioning fish.

If you think about it, the stock market is nothing but an auction.  Selling assets, in this case stocks or bonds, on the open market.  The more demand for a particular stock the higher the sales price, letting the market determine the value of the asset. 

* Information obtained from "A History of the Auction" by Brian Learmount.