Cattle Herding... (was Re: in praise of gold)

R. A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Mon Nov 26 20:11:52 PST 2001


At 5:21 PM -0800 on 11/26/01, georgemw at 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 at 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'





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