[zeroonetwothree]

This article isn’t super convincing to me. It seems like the author had a preconceived goal and didn’t try hard to falsify it. For example, what about the “gimwali” exchange? That’s clearly a barter system. I believe Mesopotamia also had some barter-type systems (eg cuneiform tablets show exchanges of one good for another).

And realistically we just don’t have records going back to the time that we would expect most barter systems to have existed. It doesn’t really prove they didn’t.

Sure, gift economies were also prominent, perhaps more than barter. But it’s hard to believe that you would use them on outsiders.