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....it's really a stretch to call these stones "money." Yes, they represent value, but other than that they practically immobile, non-portable, non-fungible, a

....it's really a stretch to call these stones "money." Yes, they represent value, but other than that they practically immobile, non-portable, non-fungible, and work entirely via word of mouth and rely on human honesty...perhaps it's more appropriate to call it proto-money.

carapace 7y ago
It's proto-banking, eh? They skipped the earlier phases of finance. It reminds me of the aliens in Douglas Adams' who, having fifty arms, are the only species to invent under-arm deodorant before the wheel.
- kragen 7y ago
  Probably hard currencies started out as debt and title systems like the rai stones. If you look at a pidgin English dialect like Nigerian pidgin, and compare it to British English or for that matter Nigerian non-pidgin English, you might assume that pidgin English was the original form, since it's simpler, and that British English evolved from it. But in fact the truth is the opposite: pidgin English is a simplified version of English developed as a lingua franca for international communication. The same seems to be true of hard currency and especially barter. Hard currency is pidgin banking; barter is pidgin hard currency. Rai stones show us the complexity of social arrangements surrounding money that in a homogeneous culture within a generation or two, but which are only legible to someone who grew up in the culture to which that money belongs. In Yap this heritage has been preserved, although diminished in importance; elsewhere it has been mostly lost. Hard currency is sufficiently simple to bridge cultural gaps and even gaps between ages, like pidgin English or Glosa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
  - carapace 7y ago
    That book is on my list to read. One of the most interesting things I've heard about money is what Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600) supposedly said: "Whatever has the greatest value and the least cost of storage becomes money."
    - serf 7y ago
      it's a good book, but the earlier chapters regarding tribal economics and the valued currency being tribal women themselves is questionable from a truth standpoint. Tribes traded people for goods and services, sometimes temporarily. It was mostly a sex and politics thing, but the book views it as a form of currency bartering and trade; I think there is more nuance there.
- mavhc 7y ago
  Reminds me more of https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Triganic_Pu https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Triganic_Pu Also barter was never really a thing: However, ethnographic studies have shown that no present or past society has used barter without any other medium of exchange or measurement, nor have anthropologists found evidence that money emerged from barter, instead finding that gift-giving (credit extended on a personal basis with an inter-personal balance maintained over the long term) was the most usual means of exchange of goods and services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter
hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
This is the definition of land contract, so maybe that’s a better analogy.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Honestly, with all that oral history thing, it sounds like a proto-blockchain. The "true chain" in any given situation is determined by the set of oral histories that everyone can agree on.
- twic 7y ago
  It's also sort of the same as how stock ownership works, where ultimate ownership of stocks doesn't change, but authority over them does: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-07-14/banks-forgot-who-was-supposed-to-own-dell-shares https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-07-14/banks-...
lawn 7y ago
Note that they have smaller versions of them too, which works like regular coins.
- rdlw 7y ago
  It's not totally clear from the article, but it would seem that the small coins are worth much less than the large ones since there is little hardship involved in their excavation and transportation. So the small ones function more like coins, and the large ones are more like valuable property which can be exchanged via an oral deed.
efreak 7y ago
"in the case of stones that are too large to move", yes. Other stones are smaller, mentioned at sizes of 3.5 or 2.8-3.1cm each, an easy size to carry. Not knowing much about the area they were used in, I'd say the quantity (6000 or so according to the article) is more limiting.

carapace 7y ago

It's proto-banking, eh? They skipped the earlier phases of finance. It reminds me of the aliens in Douglas Adams' who, having fifty arms, are the only species to invent under-arm deodorant before the wheel.

kragen 7y ago
Probably hard currencies started out as debt and title systems like the rai stones. If you look at a pidgin English dialect like Nigerian pidgin, and compare it to British English or for that matter Nigerian non-pidgin English, you might assume that pidgin English was the original form, since it's simpler, and that British English evolved from it. But in fact the truth is the opposite: pidgin English is a simplified version of English developed as a lingua franca for international communication. The same seems to be true of hard currency and especially barter. Hard currency is pidgin banking; barter is pidgin hard currency. Rai stones show us the complexity of social arrangements surrounding money that in a homogeneous culture within a generation or two, but which are only legible to someone who grew up in the culture to which that money belongs. In Yap this heritage has been preserved, although diminished in importance; elsewhere it has been mostly lost. Hard currency is sufficiently simple to bridge cultural gaps and even gaps between ages, like pidgin English or Glosa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
- carapace 7y ago
  That book is on my list to read. One of the most interesting things I've heard about money is what Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600) supposedly said: "Whatever has the greatest value and the least cost of storage becomes money."
  - serf 7y ago
    it's a good book, but the earlier chapters regarding tribal economics and the valued currency being tribal women themselves is questionable from a truth standpoint. Tribes traded people for goods and services, sometimes temporarily. It was mostly a sex and politics thing, but the book views it as a form of currency bartering and trade; I think there is more nuance there.
mavhc 7y ago
Reminds me more of https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Triganic_Pu https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Triganic_Pu Also barter was never really a thing: However, ethnographic studies have shown that no present or past society has used barter without any other medium of exchange or measurement, nor have anthropologists found evidence that money emerged from barter, instead finding that gift-giving (credit extended on a personal basis with an inter-personal balance maintained over the long term) was the most usual means of exchange of goods and services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter

hcarvalhoalves 7y ago

This is the definition of land contract, so maybe that’s a better analogy.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Honestly, with all that oral history thing, it sounds like a proto-blockchain. The "true chain" in any given situation is determined by the set of oral histories that everyone can agree on.

twic 7y ago
It's also sort of the same as how stock ownership works, where ultimate ownership of stocks doesn't change, but authority over them does: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-07-14/banks-forgot-who-was-supposed-to-own-dell-shares https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-07-14/banks-...

lawn 7y ago

Note that they have smaller versions of them too, which works like regular coins.

rdlw 7y ago
It's not totally clear from the article, but it would seem that the small coins are worth much less than the large ones since there is little hardship involved in their excavation and transportation. So the small ones function more like coins, and the large ones are more like valuable property which can be exchanged via an oral deed.

efreak 7y ago

"in the case of stones that are too large to move", yes. Other stones are smaller, mentioned at sizes of 3.5 or 2.8-3.1cm each, an easy size to carry. Not knowing much about the area they were used in, I'd say the quantity (6000 or so according to the article) is more limiting.