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They used money. The Incas had a system for accounting using knots https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu You don’t need p

They used money. The Incas had a system for accounting using knots https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu You don’t need physical coins to have money

cyberax 3y ago
They certainly used _accounting_, but not money (currency). They were not assigning certain monetary value to items.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    It assumes that Inca used formal loans and debts. They certainly used accounting for resources, though.
weatherlight 3y ago
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.
- csomar 3y ago
  So they invented the modern fiat monetary system before it was cool?
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
7thaccount 3y ago
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.
neeleshs 3y ago
It is fun to think of knots as rudimentary Merkel trees!

They used money. The Incas had a system for accounting using knots https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu You don’t need physical coins to have money

cyberax 3y ago

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

monero-xmr 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  It assumes that Inca used formal loans and debts. They certainly used accounting for resources, though.

weatherlight 3y ago

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.

csomar 3y ago
So they invented the modern fiat monetary system before it was cool?
monero-xmr 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.

7thaccount 3y ago

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.

neeleshs 3y ago

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