The Prehistoric Economy: A system not based on money

First, we need to eliminate cash or any semblance of cash from our memory. Ah no, I don't want to hear about shells or whatever. There is some possibilities that cash of some sort was substituted by something else, but in the end, you had a handful of whatever and it wasn't really money.

The system was based on barter, but that is only part of the economy. One item was traded for another but wealth was not accumulated as it is today. Today we do a job, then go to a store and buy what we need. (Sometimes those who we buy stuff off don't know the origins or even the name of what we are purchasing. I had to spell rutabaga to the teller just yesterday.) For most things that was not even in the realm of possibilities. You may have heard of nature provides and that saying goes deeper than what we know. Nature doesn't provide randomly and this is something we forget.

Nature has to be cultivated, protected and harvested in a way that it provided not just for today but in the future as well. They knew the land would only do this for so long so they began to plan a move the instant they settled in. (At least the Wendat and Iroquois did) Land was settled that would supply everything that was needed, including trees =wood and things like canoes and hopefully stone for tools.

Your wealth was in the land around you, the water in the streams and the fish in the lakes. Pieces of paper did not get you what you needed, nature provided and you needed to treat it right. So the relationship was intimate, you live with it and not against it.

For some items trade was needed. But this was beyond just item for item...elders would pass their knowledge in many things onto the younger set. This was paid for but not in a straight forward here's a bunch of paper ways. Wealth was also in these transactions, time invested in others was returned in kind. This made you wealthy if you were generous and unwealthy if you were not. So these ties were also guarded carefully and held intimately. You wanted the young ones who you poured your time and knowledge into to be there to return the "favor"

Now you may argue this is not an economy, but it actually was. And a somewhat successful and happy one. Not only were you wealthy but we can also see where it could be stolen, prisoners were taken, crops and food stole.

Early treaties can expose this way of thinking as well. Being a chief was looking after their people, rarely did the chief want anything for himself but directed most of what was traded to the people, his people, so that in the way we discussed gain wealth.

Greed was eliminated culturally in this way as greed lead to the betterment of the village. However this also can be seen in the negative. Raids on other villages and those not your own were left without food, sometimes losing their young men and women to slavery.

So as you can see money may just be the root of all evil after all. Now we speak of cashless societies, but the world of "cashless" is only that we no longer even have a piece of paper but a figure on a screen.

This doesn't tell the whole culture or even economic story, it is but a brief sketch. I just want to illustrate how some aspects that are a mystery to us actually make a lot of sense when you have context.

The economy does have a scale limitation. There is only so big a society can get before reciprocal good will can work, you can only do so much of it. It worked on the most part in small villages...just couldn't work in a bigger setting. Or could it. If Star trek teaches us...well that is in the future, and other than claiming Jean-Luc Picard as a descendant...

Art Duval Pipesmoke of the past