[qubex]

The “half barter” theory of the origin of money has been refuted — there is no evidence that ‘primitive’ societies use barter and eventually experienced an urge to facilitate transactions by introducing “universal tokens”. Bated is what people habituated to money revert to when money is not available (those famous “cigarette economies” of POW camps) but that’s not the same thing — indeed it’s just indicative of pervasive cognitive bias. Rather, all evidence points towards money arising for the sake of political centralisation: demand that taxes be paid in terms of these tokens and you create scarcity (tax bills due soon! need money!), a way to pay your soldiers (actually, displaced village folk), and a local demand for the tokens you’re paying them with. What do native societies use: mental tallies of favours and goods rendered, because after all our evolutionary environment is small units of fifty or less individuals in a high-trust environment. I suggest you read Debt by David Graeber, of Occupy Wall Street fame.