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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 4546582, member: 57463&quot;]See &quot;Curious Currency&quot; by Robert Leonard, reviewed here on CoinTalk:</p><p><a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/book-review-curious-currency-by-robert-leonard.337168/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/book-review-curious-currency-by-robert-leonard.337168/">https://www.cointalk.com/threads/book-review-curious-currency-by-robert-leonard.337168/</a></p><p>[ATTACH]1125554[/ATTACH]</p><p>Aztec patolquechtli (cloth pieces)</p><p>Cacoa beans as money antedates even the Mayans. The Aztecs inherited the practice.</p><p>A bit more about the Ecuadoran axes and their extent over space and time is there, also.</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition, if you research the copper country of Michigan, you will find that Keewanau copper has been found in Native American mounds along the Mississippi and in Georgia dating to the Middle Woodland 200 CE up to the 1100s. Those finds include seashells, apparently some from the Pacific region, indicating far-reaching trade networks.</p><p><br /></p><p>On this subject of &quot;trade&quot; we have to be careful. Money as we know and love it is a very modern and very restricted cultural attribute. We look at Sumer or China or the Greeks and think that these behaviors were universal since the stone age. None of that is true. For many people -- even after the invention of coinage -- coins, money, precious goods, were <b>not intended for economic calculation</b> but for <b>ritual gift exchange.</b> The seashells from the Pacific, the copper from Keewanau, the tobacco pipes and all that, they were meant to seal friendships, relationships, marriages.</p><p><br /></p><p>Coins themselves are somewhat peculiar. It is cogent that in the Bible, payments are recorded as earrings or bracelets of so many shekel weights.</p><p><br /></p><p>Wampum in particular was also a unique invention. In his seminal book on primitive money numismatist Charles J. Optiz follows ethnologists in attributing the invention of wampum to Dekanawidah, the Great Peacemaker. The intense labor required to make just one bead was enough to create the perceived value in the gift. The beads were not intended for financial calculation but for ritual gift exchange in peacemaking.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, I read that when Columbus bumped into Natives, they had no interest in gold, having enough of it for decoration, but being very interested in the copper (brass; bronze) fittings of their clothing.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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