Come on… It's been known for more than a century that bartering has never been the default mean of exchange among humans, can we kill this myth eventually?!
This is obviously not an attempt at anything remotely resembling documentary history. It’s more of a just so story explaining what problem each step solved.
Unless of course one thinks that smooth gray stones from a riverbed two miles away reflects some historically significant point in money’s evolution.
The problem is the story is wrong, and that leads to misunderstandings of what money is and how economic institutions arose in fact vs mythology.
For starters, debt records came before money basically everywhere we have evidence for the invention of money.
i would very strongly suggest reading David Graeber. It completely revolutionized my understanding of how human social and economic institutions emerge and evolve in actual fact vs imagined myth.
We can just tell the real story, it's far more interesting and useful than the myth.
No, what I and the other commenter are saying is you don't understand why the article is misleading because you don't know the actual scholarly knowledge here.
In your other comment you use wording along the lines of "still useful to show what problem each technology solved" but the part you're missing is the explanations are largely wrong, not just in the sense of not telling actual history but you will come alway with mistaken conclusions because the imagined/example history is fundamentally wrong.
So, consider if you're getting this from multiple people, perhaps you're missing something on the topic.
There are two commenting critics. So "multiple" is true, I suppose, but only quite weakly so. And there are more than 4x that many upvotes on the top-level comment. So I don't think it is as simple as "everyone is saying you are wrong."
stymaar · · focus · HN ↗
Come on… It's been known for more than a century that bartering has never been the default mean of exchange among humans, can we kill this myth eventually?!
compiler-guy · · focus · HN ↗
Unless of course one thinks that smooth gray stones from a riverbed two miles away reflects some historically significant point in money’s evolution.
jasonwatkinspdx · · focus · HN ↗
For starters, debt records came before money basically everywhere we have evidence for the invention of money.
i would very strongly suggest reading David Graeber. It completely revolutionized my understanding of how human social and economic institutions emerge and evolve in actual fact vs imagined myth.
We can just tell the real story, it's far more interesting and useful than the myth.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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compiler-guy · · focus · HN ↗
jasonwatkinspdx · · focus · HN ↗
In your other comment you use wording along the lines of "still useful to show what problem each technology solved" but the part you're missing is the explanations are largely wrong, not just in the sense of not telling actual history but you will come alway with mistaken conclusions because the imagined/example history is fundamentally wrong.
So, consider if you're getting this from multiple people, perhaps you're missing something on the topic.
compiler-guy · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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