ift economy[edit]
In a gift economy, valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for
immediate or future rewards (i.e. there is no formal quid pro quo).[39] Ideally, simultaneous or
recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community.
There are various social theories concerning gift economies. Some consider the gifts to be a form
of reciprocal altruism, where relationships are created through this type of exchange.[40] Another
interpretation is that implicit "I owe you" debt[41] and social status are awarded in return for the "gifts".
[42]
Consider for example, the sharing of food in some hunter-gatherer societies, where food-sharing
is a safeguard against the failure of any individual's daily foraging. This custom may reflect altruism,
it may be a form of informal insurance, or may bring with it social status or other benefits.
Emergence of money[edit]
Anthropologists have noted many cases of "primitive" societies using what look to Westerners very
much like money, but for non-commercial purposes; indeed, commercial use may have been
prohibited:
Often, such currencies are never used to buy and sell anything at all. Instead, they are used to
create, maintain, and otherwise reorganize relations between people: to arrange marriages,
establish the paternity of children, head off feuds, console mourners at funerals, seek forgiveness in
the case of crimes, negotiate treaties, acquire followers – almost anything but trade in yams,
shovels, pigs, or jewelry.[43]
This suggests that the basic idea of money may have long preceded its application to commercial
trade.
After the domestication of cattle and the start of cultivation of crops in 9000–6000 BC, livestock and
plant products were used as money.[44] However, it is in the nature of agricultural production that
things take time to reach fruition. The farmer may need to buy things that he cannot pay for
immediately. Thus the idea of debt and credit was introduced, and a need to record and track it
arose.
The establishment of the first cities in Mesopotamia (c. 3000 BCE) provided the infrastructure for the
next simplest form of money of account – asset-backed credit or representative money. Farmers
would deposit their grain in the temple which recorded the deposit on clay tablets and gave the
farmer a receipt in the form of a clay token which they could then use to pay fees or other debts to
the temple.[1] Since the bulk of the deposits in the temple were of the main staple, barley, a fixed
quantity of barley came to be used as a unit of account.[45]
Aristotle's opinion of the creation of money of exchange as a new thing in society is:
When the inhabitants of one country became more dependent on those of another, and they
imported what they needed, and exported what they had too much of, money necessarily came into
use.[46]
Trading with foreigners required a form of money which was not tied to the local temple or economy,
money that carried its value with it. A third, proxy, commodity that would mediate exchanges which
could not be settled with direct barter was the solution. Which commodity would be used was a
matter of agreement between the two parties, but as trade links expanded and the number of parties
involved increased the number of acceptable proxies would have decreased. Ultimately, one or two
commodities were converged on in each trading zone, the most common being gold and silver.
This process was independent of the local monetary system so in some cases societies may have
used money of exchange before developing a local money of account. In societies where foreign
trade was rare money of exchange may have appeared much later than money of account.
In early Mesopotamia copper was used in trade for a while but was soon superseded by silver. The
temple (which financed and controlled most foreign trade) fixed exchange rates between barley and
silver, and other important commodities, which enabled payment using any of them. It also enabled
the extensive use of accounting in managing the whole economy, which led to the development of
writing and thus the beginning of history.[47]
