Everything you’ve said is generally true, but I say… not 100% or confirmed or without exception…
Because we keep finding exceptions.
Some cultures… actually do seem to have skipped the commodity-currency phase, and gone straight to things like specific shells, or beads, or something else that has no practical utility.
Some other cultures just… didn’t do currency. Basically at all. Gift economies, handled by frequent communal sharing events and/or parties/feasts/festivals.
You’ve got things like tally sticks, though those are ultimately backed by a formal social structure… they dynamics of how they work as currency is significantly different than most others.
I didn’t want to sound too certain about it because I’ve already made jokes about evo-psych in this thread.
A lot of economists like to project their modern worldviews backward, and are then slapped in the face by anthropologists/ancient historians/archaelogists, telling them the actual evidence shows that economist’s thought experiments are often overly simplistic, lack nuance, and functionally try to cram a limited framework onto what increasingly seems to have been a much more diverse and varied, and localized and unique actual human history.
Everything you’ve said is generally true, but I say… not 100% or confirmed or without exception…
Because we keep finding exceptions.
Some cultures… actually do seem to have skipped the commodity-currency phase, and gone straight to things like specific shells, or beads, or something else that has no practical utility.
Some other cultures just… didn’t do currency. Basically at all. Gift economies, handled by frequent communal sharing events and/or parties/feasts/festivals.
You’ve got things like tally sticks, though those are ultimately backed by a formal social structure… they dynamics of how they work as currency is significantly different than most others.
I didn’t want to sound too certain about it because I’ve already made jokes about evo-psych in this thread.
A lot of economists like to project their modern worldviews backward, and are then slapped in the face by anthropologists/ancient historians/archaelogists, telling them the actual evidence shows that economist’s thought experiments are often overly simplistic, lack nuance, and functionally try to cram a limited framework onto what increasingly seems to have been a much more diverse and varied, and localized and unique actual human history.