Graeber points out Money, in the sense of units of abstract or general value, wasn't unknown to intimate human economies of village and tribe.
So-called primitive money was instead a ritual and occasional device. So the ˜bride yielded to a woman âs family by her suitor might, among the Tiv of Central Nigeria, take the form of a quantity of brass rods; or a murderer, among the Iroquois, might make reparations to his
victim's family with a gift of white wampum. The inaugural use of money, then,
wasn't even to record commercial debts but in currencies of cloth or metal, whale teeth or oxen, and sometimes human beings themselves (slaves) to betoken ˜debts that cannot possibly be paid.
So where are we today? swaggering on our 'developed' monetary plinth; with our unblushing faith in £$ capacity to determine or discover genuinely equivalent values.
So-called primitive money was instead a ritual and occasional device. So the ˜bride yielded to a woman âs family by her suitor might, among the Tiv of Central Nigeria, take the form of a quantity of brass rods; or a murderer, among the Iroquois, might make reparations to his
victim's family with a gift of white wampum. The inaugural use of money, then,
wasn't even to record commercial debts but in currencies of cloth or metal, whale teeth or oxen, and sometimes human beings themselves (slaves) to betoken ˜debts that cannot possibly be paid.
So where are we today? swaggering on our 'developed' monetary plinth; with our unblushing faith in £$ capacity to determine or discover genuinely equivalent values.
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