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Things like tally sticks for tracking debt were used, absent and before currency, it seems. Pretty widely. IIRC (it's been a while since I read Debt) the book a
by karatestomp 7y ago
Things like tally sticks for tracking debt were used, absent and before currency, it seems. Pretty widely. IIRC (it's been a while since I read Debt) the book asserts that very small tribal or family economies likely worked the way you describe, with informal, mental tallies of debts, and as communities got just a bit larger physical tallies took over, persisting for some time. A consequence of this is that debt isn't surely "less real" or less essential/natural than money, nor even newer, but in fact more real, more essential or natural (so to speak), and older.
- nybble41 7y agoEven in small groups you still need a currency (unit of account) before you can keep a tally, though—unless you're going to keep separate tallies for each kind of good, which quickly becomes impractical since even similar kinds of goods may not have equal value. Also, you need some standard good with broad marketability as a means of settling debts which can't be paid in kind (i.e. legal tender or equivalent).
- bildung 7y agoThey certainly had a unit of account (bushels of grain, for example) to quantify debt, but they didn't have a currency, which has additional necessary criteria besides unit of account. What these cultures had, according to Graeber, were essentially ledgers for keeping track of debt.