[jphoward]

One thing I always wonder is how did all these countries manage to find enough gold to run an (albeit tiny) economy off them? I've never heard of/seen a gold mine in the UK, and yet 2000 years ago they were mining enough to mint currency. Was it all relatively surface level and rapidly mined out, and now all gone?

[weatherlight]

Phenomenal book that cover's this exact topic, "Debt: The First 5000 Years." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

    "The book argues that debt has typically retained its primacy, with cash and barter usually limited to situations of low trust involving strangers or those not considered credit-worthy"

It would make sense that cash would pop up once the Romans arrived, and would be in small amounts to facilitate spot transactions between Romans and the pre-Roman peoples of Britain and why there's such little amounts of cash.

Further more, I can imagine a scenario where Roman coins were melted down to make these coins (total conjecture) .

[LudwigNagasena]

The book is a combination of anecdata and speculation presented in a polemical style. Not really something that I would call “phenomenal”.

[weatherlight]

the book stimulates important discussions on economic history and the roots of our financial systems. While its style is assertive, its contribution to questioning established economic assumptions is undeniably valuable. its also backed by anthropological and archaeological evidence.

[LudwigNagasena]

Unfortunately, Graeber is not well-versed in economic theory so him “questioning established economic assumptions” often resembles fighting windmills or not even that.

If you know any actual contributions to economics or the history of economics that were consequences of his stimulation, I would be glad to hear about them.

[bibanez]

My feeling when I read Debt was that he was smart enough to understand conventional economic theory. My brother studied economics and he was the one who actually recommended me the book.

[tomrod]

As a second nomination, I hold a PhD in economics and found the book interesting.

[weatherlight]

Graeber's background in economic anthropology offers a fresh lens through which to view economic history, highlighting the social and cultural dimensions that traditional economic theories sometimes overlook. His work has encouraged interdisciplinary dialogue, prompting economists and historians alike to incorporate broader socio-cultural understandings into their analyses. While his approach differs from conventional economic theorizing, it complements it by adding depth to our understanding of economic phenomena.

[sebmellen]

I don’t say this as an accusation, but your writing is remarkably similar to ChatGPT output.

[LudwigNagasena]

Right, but are there _actual_ contributions to economics or the history of economics that were consequences of his “stimulation”?

Also, saying that he single-handedly prompted “economists and historians alike to incorporate broader socio-cultural understandings into their analyses” is a huge denigration of institutional economics, behavioural economics, Austrian economics, social economics, etc.

[teachrdan]

> Graeber is not well-versed in economic theory

David Graeber was a professor at the London School of Economics. It appears they believed he was well-versed in economic theory :)

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/condolences/2020/09/03/professor-dav...

[LudwigNagasena]

He was a professor of anthropology.

[ekidd]

From my limited number of anthropology courses, I can assure you that the suspicion between the anthropology and economics departments is often mutual.

You know the joke about how physics is the study of spherical cows of uniform density in a frictionless vacuum? That's because intro level physics makes lots of simplifying assumptions. And if a physicist tried to use those assumptions to lecture a dairy farmer, the farmer might assume the physicist was a fool.

Anthropology tends to assume that too many economists study "spherical humans of uniform density in a frictionless market," basically. One of my anthropology professors actually covered these disputes, including specific cases where U Chicago economics professors attempted to advise governments around the world, and wound up totally misunderstanding particular situations.

Now, anthropology has its blind spots, too. Cultural anthropology has been a bit too willing to believe research describing exotic social structures. Archaeology is fairly sound on the nuts and bolts of pre-historical goods and food sources, but it is sometimes blind to how ideology shapes culture. (Which is a safely conservative stance to take when working with pre-historical cultures, to be fair.)

The factors Graeber describes aren't totally surprising. Lots of real world economies run on complicated webs of personal relationships and favors—just look at investors, for example. Or look at the pre-modern property rights described in Seeing Like a State. Land ownership and harvesting rights in a medieval village could be ridiculously complex. Or the customary payments and "gifts" that people made. For another modern example, consider office politics in a large corporation.

I think Graeber's basic case is plausible: complex debts and obligations seem to underly many band-level and village-level societies, especially when central state power is weak. These arrangements can seem bizarre: I remember a video of an interview with a pig farmer, probably about 60 years old, who was organizing a gift of hundreds of pigs to a neighboring village. This was apparently some kind of competitive gesture designed to elevate the status of the giver. And the farmer was really into this. He was complaining that kids these days were shockingly lazy, and that they had no appetite for hard work, and that they had no hope of putting together a proper gift of pigs. And how can you get anywhere in life if you can't embarrass a neighboring village by giving them more pigs than they gave you? It was a status display, similar to throwing conspicuously expensive parties to outdo your social circle.

The anthropology literature contains a ton of odd behavior around debts, obligations, and complex traditional rights. In a pre-modern community of 60 to 5,000 people, only a fraction of the economy seems to involve currencies or direct barter. Currency is a fantastic simplifying technology. And as Graeber points out, complex traditional webs of debt can be pretty brutal towards people who don't fit in.

[namaria]

I think this whole discussion is related to epistemological attitudes. Anthropology and History tends to lean more heavily into the irreducible complexities of society and to analyze and describe them in detail while usually avoiding to deduce grand theories. Economics on the other hand is very used to a more reductionist, mechanistic view inherited from the political success of early 21st century physics in changing the outcome of wars. Economists saw a chance to be taken seriously in policy making by pretending they were doing social engineering.

[imtringued]

Obviously his contribution is shattering the barter myth. You might consider that insignificant, but it is something.

[bedobi]

I don't mean to be uncharitable but you need to read up on what actual experts say about things Graeber says. He's Joe Rogan level knowledgable, and that's not a compliment.

[spicymapotofu]

Where can I search for this kind of discourse? There's a lot of "actual" here without names.

[nerdponx]

I find that this is true about most non-fiction books I have read. Even when extensively cited, I often get the impression that the author is drawing large conclusions from small data.

[muzani]

Mortimer Adler says that history is closer to fiction than many other forms of books. It's not even data. Autobiographies in particular are rarely true, but not entirely false. It seems that the more data one has, the more likely they are to be biased in interpretation.

[willdr]

Read some actual history books (as in, academic historians, not pop historians).

[nerdponx]

Got any recommendations? I am pretty deep into the Hamilton biography which seems very extensively researched and widely praised. It's an excellent story if nothing else.

[Bouncingsoul1]

I currently work through this list https://press.princeton.edu/series/the-princeton-economic-hi... quite some books on dept eg. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691173771/le... or https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691168357/fr...

[Exoristos]

And very tendentious.

[7thaccount]

I've seen some work on this as well. It would make sense in small tight knit communities to help out your neighbor when you could and vice-versa. There would be a relatively small need for coinage until things became a lot more complex and urbanized.

[MichaelZuo]

That's still true nowadays if you limit 'cash' to just physical currency.

[weatherlight]

its not quite the same, I explain why in the comments below this one. :)

[netbioserror]

As early as the Bronze Age, Britain was part of wide-spanning trade networks that funneled Cornwallish tin to the empires of the Near East. I would imagine that even before the invention of true coinage, various quantities of gold and other precious metals were circulating in Britain from those Mediterranean sources.

[Turing_Machine]

> As early as the Bronze Age

Note that while Great Britain didn't have a whole lot of gold, it did have a whole lot of tin.

You can't make bronze without tin. People who want to make bronze will give you gold for it.

[867-5309]

>Cornwallish

Cornish would do

[gilleain]

Interesting question - it seems like there were Welsh mines in Roman times:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolaucothi_Gold_Mines

> They are the only mines for Welsh gold outside those of the Dolgellau gold-belt, and are a Scheduled Ancient Monument. They are also the only known Roman gold mines in Britain, although it does not exclude the likelihood that they exploited other known sources in Devon in South West England, north Wales, Scotland and elsewhere.

[lostlogin]

Thanks.

The wiki on this mine is quite extensive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolaucothi_Gold_Mines

[creer]

To complement the answer "yes, there was surface level gold which was simply mined, and early", also 2000 years ago is not that long ago. By that time there was commerce going on across all of Europe, and gold had been used in coins and jewelry or cult items by most of these cultures for a long time BEFORE that. So that any specific gold could actually have come from elsewhere.

[justincormack]

I have been in a gold mine in Wales, I think it was this one that is Roman https://www.visitwales.com/attraction/visitor-centre/dolauco...

[fiedzia]

Gold is relatively common, it's just that most mines were mined completely or to the point where further exploration was not economically viable, so few were preserved, though many mines that we have been used recently for other minerals did contain some gold in the past.

From first google link (https://www.bullionbypost.co.uk/index/gold/gold-mining-in-th...):

"Gold has been mined in Scotland for over 2,500 years. There was gold mining in Crawford from the early 1500s" - and that's just a few examples.

I recommend reading about or visiting Great Orme if you are interested in mining, it's a copper mine that was in use since bronze age.

[spaceman_2020]

What’s surprising to me is that cultures all across the world agreed that this shiny metal was valuable and could be readily exchanged anywhere for goods and services.

We know that gold is valuable today because of its distribution, availability and metallurgical properties. But random tribes who haven’t even seen an iron tool somehow decided that this shiny metal was scarce and valuable enough to hoard and desire.

Is it something in the metal itself?

[Wytwwww]

It's shiny and very easy to work and doesn't rust. The complete opposite of iron, which didn't really become that widespread until the bronze age trade routes collapsed (tin and copper aren't found in the same place). Bronze was also a much nicer metal than iron back in those days. Much, much easier to work and about as strong.

[eszed]

Incorruptible - as in, doesn't rust - and is commonly found in a state that doesn't need to be refined.

[fl7305]

> Is it something in the metal itself?

Yes. I never understood it myself, until the first time I held a heavy gold necklace. The feeling is hard to describe.

[spaceman_2020]

I've felt that too. But then I wonder if this is a true feeling or if its just cultural training - countless stories have consistently told me that gold is valuable.

[galaxyLogic]

> Is it something in the metal itself?

Gold can be easily melted to combine larger and smaller portions together or split them up. It is "inert" meaning does not easily react with anything else so you don't lose it too easily. It is a great store of value.

And think why does Bitcoin cost so much? Because of its scarcity.

[hiddencost]

Scarcity is actually an incredibly valuable property. Control over gold production meant control over the money supply. Otherwise, anyone could inflate your currency into oblivion.

[WalterBright]

Just imagine what would happen if the money supply consisted of pieces of paper that the government could print any time it wanted more money!

[namaria]

Wait until you learn that banks can just make more money by increasing numeric values in databases. "Money supply" is very poorly understood in armchair denouncements of modern central banking.

[WalterBright]

> Wait until you learn that banks can just make more money by increasing numeric values in databases.

I know how fractional reserve banking works. That "more money" is represented by the collateral for the loan.

[jamiek88]

Unprecedented wealth and living standards?

it’s not very evenly distributed wealth but our enormous economies are not limited by supplies of an arbitrarily valuable metal.

All money is imaginary anyway.

[WalterBright]

You can't print wealth from a printing press.

[fennecfoxy]

Probably mostly because it was scarce. Additionally because it would've been the only metal that didn't tarnish compared to other metals that did.

I mean gold has always been and will always be (until we start space mining I guess) scarce, can see similar effects for things like aluminium, for example here: https://clintonaluminum.com/aluminum-was-once-worth-more-tha....

So based on that I would say it was purely thanks to scarcity. Money is used to represent x human effort/time after all; it takes time to find the gold, then time to process it. But the same applies to various other weird currencies used in the world like seashells/beads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money#:~:text=Shell%20mo....

I feel like there's an intermediate step with these where seashells/beads/similar objects had cultural significance and therefore value because they had to be found (and sometimes worked into beads). It's a step from pure trading of useful items like a knife or an item of clothing to an intermediate currency like seashells, then to precious metals (which are still valuable even if melted down) to what we have now (currency as a symbol of trust that the currency is worth what it's worth as enforced by a government or some other system).

[kylebenzle]

Have you never held or owned any gold? Its amazing. Its like really hard clay, but its metal, AND doesnt rust, its amazing! Its hard to understand the question to be honest, I mean, its GOLD!

[helsinkiandrew]

Gold is both easy to work with and make finely detailed jewellery and is THE shiny metal - a gold broach, or anything gold would have shone out on your clothing far more than any other metal.

See this video of a Roman era coin being unearthed by a metal detectorist - untarnished or corroded after 2000 years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsmF3p4jVV0&t=10s

[imtringued]

How many products from the Roman empire does this buy you? None? It didn't store anything. It's not a store of value at all.

[nn3]

They didn't necessarily need gold. For example in bronze/iron age trading it was common to use relatively standardized small bars of other metals for payment. These were not coins, but approximately had the same function.

[retrac]

In a few rare spots of the world, gold is literally just in the dirt and rocks.

There's certainly some gold in the UK; there's still probably thousands of extractable tonnes of gold in the UK. Whether a deposit is economic to extract is a different question. Very few sites in the world can compete with the gold mines of Canada, China and Australia with their very rich deposits.

> Was it all relatively surface level and rapidly mined out, and now all gone?

To some degree this is a factor. Copper and tin are other resources you'll find are already heavily extracted in Europe:

> The main mining district of the Kupferschiefer in Germany was Mansfeld Land, which operated from at least 1199 AD, and has provided 2,009,800 tonnes of copper and 11,111 tonnes of silver. The Mansfeld mining district was exhausted in 1990.

It's not so much that they literally ran out - there's still plenty of copper there. But it was only viable to run in the East German (Communist) economy. Now that most is extracted, there are diminishing returns. It takes more labour and processing and etc. than extracting from a deposit elsewhere would.

When Europeans came to North America and reached regions that had never had a particularly high population density and had never had much mining - like in parts of the Rocky Mountains - they sometimes literally found gold dust lying at the bottom of riverbeds and chunks of gold ore sticking out of the side of cliff-faces. (Cue up a gold rush.) Europe's first large-scale miners probably had a similar experience of abundance once, many thousands of years ago.

[pyuser583]

It came from trade. The exact provenance was not important.

Herodotus tried to figure out where all the “stuff” is coming from, but mostly found stories he admits are far-fetched.

Modern historians take pleasure in proving his “myths” to be fact.

“Apparently there is some place in Asia where gold is mined by ants!”

[cyberax]

Most of the economy back then was non-monetary.

If you're interested in this area, look up the Inca Empire. It did not really have money at all.

[0xbadcafebee]

I'm fairly sure that's not accurate. Source for "most" economies not having money?

It would appear based on some simple googling that "money" has existed in many cultures going back 30,000 years, in two forms: "money of account" and "money of exchange". Of both of those they have taken various forms. Minted coins did not appear until around 3,000 years ago.

[cyberax]

"Monetary economy" means that it uses money for the exchanges, rather than barter. Most pre-industrial economies were not monetary.

Barter economy certainly existed, probably from before the Human Sapiens. But _money_ is a relatively recent invention.

[tomjakubowski]

> Barter economy certainly existed

What is the best evidence for this historically? Anthropologists strongly dispute this idea, and believe barter was mostly used for trade between total strangers (e.g. traders from outside your society or "economy")

Graeber's Debt: the first 5000 years covers this topic

[cyberax]

> What is the best evidence for this historically?

Mostly archeological. There are many burials that contain items that were clearly not locally sourced. In some cases, they had to be transported for thousands of kilometers.

And quite often this was done for non-functional items such as jewelry or dyes.

[kspacewalk2]

Er... Money has existed for thousands of years, and has replaced barter in any society with even moderate amounts of specialization, and a population size that gets into the thousands. In Roman times, this was already the case for thousands of years. Money is one of the great enablers of trade and specialization, of empire building. Barter economy cannot sustain any of that, because barter economy does not scale. Money is a relatively recent invention in the time scale of our species existence, but that's still 3-4 thousand years of near-ubiquitous use, minimum.

[eesmith]

Was there money in pre-1778 Hawaii? Not that I have been able to figure out. I believe it was a gift economy.

There certainly was specialization in Hawaii, and with a population of over 100,000 would seem like a good counter-example.

> Barter economy cannot sustain any of that, because barter economy does not scale.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money , "There is no evidence, historical or contemporary, of a society in which barter is the main mode of exchange;[23] instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economy and debt."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-monetary_economy#Other_mon... list other money-less systems including "the Incas and possibly, also the empire of Majapahit". Both were empires.

[0xbadcafebee]

Hawai'ians had a number of skilled trades, and a caste system where a working class served a ruling class. Taxes were levied by the higher classes, and were paid in an amount based on the unit of land that was worked via subsistence farming. Those taxes were paid in the form of material goods (textiles, livestock, agriculture, etc). The material goods were the medium of exchange used to pay back a debt.

Therefore, Hawai'i did have money, in the form of commodity money (objects having intrinsic value in addition to value as a method of payment), which is distinct from barter in that there are specific recognizable units of exchange (specific amounts of commodity money used to pay a specific amount of debt). Material goods were also used as money for trade between islands.

[1] https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitst... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahupua%CA%BBa [3] https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/kona/history1g.... [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20140605052446/http://www.hawaii...

[cyberax]

The Roman Empire was basically modern. It had currency, banks, loans with interest, etc.

At the same time, the Slavic countries up north still were pre-monetary. There was little to no currency, but there was extensive trade in fur, salt, and other goods.

[Wytwwww]

> for thousands of years

It depends on how you define money. Coins didn't really exist until the 7th century BC, that doesn't mean long-range widescale trade did not exist prior to that for 1000+ years but they didn't generally use money (in the way we would understand it at least) so the boundary between using money and barter wasn't really that clear.

[noselasd]

This is highly dependent on the location. We certainly know there was a large interconnectede monetary economy around the middle east and the mediterranean around 3000 years ago. The roman empire was largely a monetarian economy as well, about 2000 years prior to what is commonly referred to as "pre-industrial", they had quite an extensive banking system as well.

[ETH_start]

Good paper from the progenitor of the blockchain, Nick Szabo, positing that the first moneys emerged up to 75,000 years ago and possibly enabled Homo sapiens sapiens to supersede Neanderthals:

https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/C...

[cyberax]

I seriously doubt that currency (a standardized medium of exchange) existed in prehistoric times. But barter economy certainly did, we have plenty of archeological evidence for it.

Still, even the barter economy was used for mostly "optional" activities. People were not dependent on it for survival, a tribe could live just fine on their own, without trade.

[Wytwwww]

> currency (a standardized medium of exchange)

That's a pretty recent innovation, standardized coins didn't appear until the 600s BC, barely 100-150 years or so prior to the Greco-Persian wars. Widescale international trade existed for 1000+ years prior to that as far as we know, you don't necessarily standardized money for that.

[andsoitis]

> Most of the economy back then was non-monetary.

In 600 BCE, Lydia's King Alyattes minted what is believed to be the first official currency, the Lydian stater. The coins were made from electrum, a mixture of silver and gold that occurs naturally, and the coins were stamped with pictures that acted as denominations.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/roots_of_money.asp

But also note that physical currency is not necessary for “money”. Money has been around for about 5000 years, ridding us from barter.

[monero-xmr]

They used money. The Incas had a system for accounting using knots https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu

You don’t need physical coins to have money

[7thaccount]

Money and debt aren't exactly the same thing though right? The quipu is a system of IOUs iirc. More like the English debt stick. With currency/money (gold, silver, copper, fiat notes), we make a transaction on the spot and we're done. There is no debt in the simple case. The poster is saying they didn't use money and it sounds like they didn't. They used a system of tracking debts which could likely be traded.

I know it's all tightly related, but I believe there is a difference.

[weatherlight]

An accounting system using knots isn't money, per ser. These systems of credit were based on mutual trust and social relations, often without a physical representation of money as we know it today.

Comparing this to coinage, the innovation of coins introduced a standardized physical object that could represent value, which allowed for a different kind of economic activity not solely based on personal trust and relationships. Coinage enabled transactions with strangers and facilitated trade over larger distances and among larger groups of people, where personal credit relationships were not feasible.

Money, has a specificity to it. In essence, while early credit systems were based on social relationships and trust within communities, coinage represented a more impersonal and widely accepted medium of exchange that did not necessarily rely on social bonds. This distinction is crucial because it allowed for the expansion of trade and the concept of money as an abstract unit of account, rather than a direct reflection of social debts and credits.

[progne]

Money-as-knots-in-a-rope sounds closer to the modern money-as-bits-on-a-plate than does money-as-metal-disks.

[weatherlight]

indeed, the comparison of quipu to modern digital money highlights the diversity of forms that 'money' can take. However, the fundamental difference lies in the functions and roles that these systems serve within their respective societies. The quipu was primarily an accounting tool, part of a complex system of record-keeping used by the Incas, which facilitated the administration of their economy, particularly in terms of tribute and state resources. It did not serve as a medium of exchange in the same way coins or modern digital money do.

modern money, whether digital or physical, serves several key functions: it is a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. While the quipu certainly functioned as a unit of account, it's not clear that it served as a medium of exchange or a store of value. These are essential characteristics that define 'money' in the economic sense.

the impersonal nature of coinage and modern digital money allows them to facilitate trade and economic activity on a scale and with a degree of anonymity that's not possible with a system like quipu, which is deeply embedded in the social and political fabric of the society that uses it.

The transition to coinage and later to digittal transactions represents a move towards a more standardized, divisible, and portable form of money that can be used in a wide range of transactions, with or without a pre-existing relationship between the parties involved. This is quite different from the quipu, which was embedded in a specific cultural context and may not have been readily exchangeable or understood outside of that context.

So while it's tempting to draw parallels between ancient accounting systems and modern digital currencies, we must be careful not to conflate the two. Each serves its purpose within its particular economic and social milieu, with specific attributes and limitations that define its use as "money."

[zopa]

> It did not serve as a medium of exchange in the same way coins or modern digital money do.

Source for the confidence here? We know that a corvée economy existed, but I’m skeptical that we can rule out private quipo-based exchange. The evidence base is pretty thin; a lot of stuff didn’t survive Pizarro.

[Wytwwww]

> Coinage enabled transactions with strangers and facilitated trade over larger distances and among larger groups of people, where personal credit relationships were not feasible.

Extensive trade international trade networks existed during the entire bronze age and the preceding periods without any coins, though. Coins are useful as an standardized accounting unit and are easy to transport but fundamentally are not that different from barter.

[monero-xmr]

I think there is a lot of fantasy thinking that ancient times didn’t use money. Trade is evident from the earliest times as proven through goods at burial sites that originated thousands of miles away. Trade necessitated commoditized assets as intermediary value stores, and common ones included salt and furs in addition to hard metal coins and commoditized metal objects like swords.

Social relationships are still important the higher you go in finance - it’s much easier to get a $100 million loan for a new building with a strong relationship with a banker than as a stranger, regardless of collateral.

I think a pre-commercial time where people didn’t care about money is a fiction.

[weatherlight]

There's a lot of anthropological and archaeological evidence to the contrary. People indeed had trade and exchanges in ancient times, but these did not aalways necessitate a formalized system of money as we understand it today. The early forms of trade were often based on complex systems of credit and debt that were deeply intertwined with social relationships and trust within communities. David Graeber's work, "Debt: the first 5000 years," highlights that for more than 5,000 years before the invention of coins, humans extensively used such credit systems to buy and sell goods, long before the existence of coins or cash.

While it is true that trade is evident from ancient times, with goods found at burial sites that originated thousands of miles away, this does not automatically imply that all trade was facilitated by a commoditized asset serving as a universal medium of exchange. In many cases, goods like salt, furs, and metal objects were indeed used in trade, but they were part of a broader system of barter and reciprocal exchange, which could function effectively without a standardized form of money.

Regarding the role of social relationships in finance, while it's accurate that relationships remain crucial, especially for large transactions in modern times, this does not discount the fact that in the past, community trust and social bonds were often the primary means of securing credit, not collateral or commoditized money. This is evident in how competitive markets and the scarcity of trust can affect transactions, as Graeber notes through an anecdote where mutual aid within a community was a given, not a transaction requiring formal repayment.

The idea of a pre-commercial time where 'people didn't care about money' may indeed be fictional, but it's more nuanced than simply saying they used money in the way we do now. They cared about value and exchange, but these were frequently managed through social mechanisms rather than through impersonal, commoditized money. It's essential to understand that the concept of money has evolved and that early forms of trade and credit were valid economic systems in their own right, even if they don't match the monetary systems we are familiar with today.

[monero-xmr]

My broader point is that certain people think that there is this utopian “pre money time” where capitalism didn’t exist. I believe capitalism is the default, free trade is the default, and the fundamental idea that people will engage in for-profit commerce is embedded into our psychologies.

[keep_reading]

Of course knots aren't "money" because money also needs scarcity and a way to prevent forgery but we have plenty of other examples: Rai stones, cowrie shells, other rare things ...

[csomar]

So they invented the modern fiat monetary system before it was cool?

[cyberax]

They certainly used _accounting_, but not money (currency). They were not assigning certain monetary value to items.

[monero-xmr]

I think it’s highly likely that a system built for counting was used for counting loans, debts, and resources. The foundation of civilization is resource allocation.

[scarecrowbob]

I'm not an expert in this so maybe am just off base.

But the key difference (I have been told) is what you can do with that accounting.

Like, I can walk into a shop and buy anything on the wall with money, whereas that kind of accounting may have very different implications for what you can do with it.

Additionally, I can take money that I gathered from one source and use it somewhere else, and it's fungible in that I can use it anywhere else in the system. If I have a debt to one person in earlier systems that debt may be non-transferable.

If those two elements are true, it becomes very difficult to do a lot of the things that we think of as money, specifically interest and massive accumulation.

[cyberax]

It assumes that Inca used formal loans and debts. They certainly used accounting for resources, though.

[neeleshs]

It is fun to think of knots as rudimentary Merkel trees!

[dghughes]

> how did all these countries manage to find enough gold

They may not have. Some gold mixed with silver or other metals may have been common. In other words counterfeiting whether officially sanctioned or by thieves was probably not uncommon.

[lostlogin]

I have a ‘silver’ Roman coin, but it’s a thin layer and it’s bronze underneath.

[tnecniv]

Rome certainly did that at different points when funding was needed

[Waterluvian]

> Was it all relatively surface level and rapidly mined out, and now all gone?

Pretty much. Elemental gold or relatively easy to refine alloys were stripped off the land over many thousands of years. Now we have to go deeper to find more.

[Simon_ORourke]

There's plenty of gold, or at least there was, in the south west of Britain back in the day. I'd assume pre Roman gold was all surface level stuff, but there were stories of way more industrial processing of silver by the Romans in Spain.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/296070#:~:text=The%20silver%20m....

[dboreham]

There were gold mines:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining_in_Scotland

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_gold

[shrubble]

Remember that issuing coins was one way to demonstrate that you really were the sovereign, also. So getting a bunch of gold together and minting some coins was good for "show of authority" and marketing purposes.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

Plus if you run into financial trouble, you can debase the currency for a while before people catch on. I think somewhere I read that this eventually happened to most ancient-world currencies, except the Venetian currency (Venice being run by merchants).

[jmyeet]

There was gold mining in Britain (specifically Scotland) at least 2,500 years ago [1].

[1]: https://www.bullionbypost.co.uk/index/gold/gold-mining-in-th...

[markb139]

It may not be on the same scale of other countries, but the UK has gold deposits which have been mined for quite some time.

[okr]

I would guess these currencies took over gradually. And they never really disappeared. So it got more and more.

[CuriousCosmic]

more or less yes. Everything that was easy to find and extract largely has been.

[permo-w]

I've never heard of a gold mine in the UK, but Welsh gold is something you often see and hear of, whatever that tells you

[spacecadet]

lol age of empires man. There was gold just sticking out of the ground everywhere. You just needed some pleebs to mine it and carry it back to your keep. or was that stronghold? I forget XP