At 5:21 PM -0800 on 11/26/01, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
But if I was an Etruscan, they would've taken my whole cow!
Actually, if you were an Etruscan, between spouse-swapping :-), you would have created a bearer instrument, clay, metal, whatever, like *they* eventually did. So, too, did various Mesopotamians, and before anyone else, including the Chinese. (cf. "A History of Money", by Davies). In the meantime, livestock work quite well in small agrarian groups, as your average Masai (or Proto-Indo-European, or proto-Texan, for that matter...), might have told you. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'