- rice: [[Emperor Meiji of Japan's vitamin deficiency#Japanese rice brokers]] - potatoes: [[freeze-dried potatoes became Incan currency]] - chestnuts: [[2021-11-13 Superstition Saturday#Chestnuts as currency]] Note: I didn't include any of these in [[2021-01-11 Currency (DRAFT)]]. [[Alternatives to Money|Currency Alternatives]] or [[Alternatives to Money]], so it might be a good [[Newsletter Ideas|newsletter idea]]. Relate to [[feast culture may be responsible for agriculture]] --- - [x] Feast culture may be responsible for agriculture. - [x] The importance of feasting in the Bronze Age and Iron Age – as a form of social glue, and a way in which elite individuals could demonstrate and enhance their high status – is widely accepted. But perhaps feasting has much more ancient roots – stretching right back to the dawn of the Neolithic. The improving climate after the end of the Ice Age may have provided the opportunity for individuals to accumulate wealth – in the form of surplus food – and influence – by providing lavish feasts. The scene was set for the emergence of stratified society. And so, Klaus Schmidt and his colleagues have argued, feasting – with or without beer – could have been the key stimulus for the development of agriculture. - [x] Ritual burning of surplus foodstuffs is more common and extravagant in times of plenty than in times of privation; it’s a useful way to get rid of things a community can’t store. - [x] Food was often used as currency throughout history. - [x] Useful as an example of the emergence of a merchant class, and also of food as currency. - [x] By the early 1700’sin both Edo and Osaka, a merchant class of ‘rice brokers’ had emerged. This network of brokers essentially bought daimyo’s (and later samurai) rice and exchanged it for paper bills. A sort of precursor to a banking system. This would actually cause some friction towards the end of the Tokugawa system with some daimyo actually being worth far less than the merchants/lenders ‘beneath’ them (you could also argue that this had the beginnings of futures trading. - [x] freeze-dried potatoes became Incan currency. By night, potatoes were laid out on the ground to freeze. During the day the'd thaw out and would be trodden on, to squeeze out water. Then they'd left out to freeze again. After three or four days and nights the potaro ow the pc Eu freeze-dried potatoes. As well as were transformed into chuño dehydrating the tubers, this processing would also drive our glycoalkaloids from the chuño, making it less bitter than fresh potatoes. While domestication would have involved the selection of the most palatable potatoes cultivation- some potatoes remained a little too bitter. Another way of reducing bitterness was to eat the potatoes with clay, which binds to the glycoalkaloids. Around Lake Titicaca today, there are still some Aymara people who eat their potatoes this way. Perhaps even more importantly, making chuño transformed potatoes into a form that could be stored for extended periods, sometimes years. While the elite amongst agricultural societies in the Fertile Crescent grew wealthy amassing stores of wheat and herds of cattle, the Inca chiefs grew and fat on their stores of dried potatoes. Chunk became a currency in its own right. Peasants paid their taxes with it, and laborers and mercenaries were paid in it. - [x] the Romans paying soldiers in flour rations for bread making and using salt as currency. In Italy the chestnut tree is called "The Bread Tree" and street vendors traditionally sell them roasted during the cold seasons. In Spain too. The word comes from the Ancient Greek (Nuts of Zeus) and Ancient Romans used it as currency to trade - [x] chocolate became its own form of money at the height of Mayan opulence—and that the loss of this delicacy may have played a role in the downfall of the famed civilization. The ancient Maya never used coins as money. Instead, like many early civilizations, they were thought to mostly barter, trading items such as tobacco, maize, and clothing. Spanish colonial accounts from the 16th century indicate that the Europeans even used cacao beans—the basis for chocolate—to pay workers, but it was unclear whether the substance was a prominent currency before their arrival. > But [later evidence shows that chocolate became a little more like coins](https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sea2.12118)—in the form of fermented and dried cacao beans. Baron documented about 180 different scenes on ceramics and murals from about 691 C.E. through 900 C.E. which show commodities delivered to Maya leaders as a tribute, or a kind of tax. Goods like tobacco and maize grain are sometimes given as tribute, but the items that pop up most in these scenes are pieces of woven cloth and bags labeled with the quantity of dried cacao beans they contain, Baron believes the fact that Maya kings collected cacao and woven cloth as tax shows that both had become a currency at this point. "They are collecting way more cacao than the palace actually consumes," she says, adding that the surplus was probably used to pay palace workers or to buy things at the marketplace. cacao was almost universally loved by the Maya. But it would have been far more prized than crops like maize because cacao trees are susceptible to crop failure and didn't grow well near Maya cities. - [ ] That said, there are lots of alternatives to money systems as well. alternatives include: - [ ] gift economy, giving-away cultures like the Salish tribes who functioned pretty well without what we would call "an economy" and were really quite communist in a way. - [ ] tribute economy - [ ] barter economy - [ ] commodity-based economy - [ ] "marker" economy (those tool items) - [ ] For one of the few games that does a good job of getting away from metal currencies, check out Path of Exile and how complex its trading system and economy can be.