In Another Land

[rain_gryphon]

Alyattes, King of Lydia (father of the legendary Croesus), is generally agreed to be the first king to mint actual coins, around 600 BC or so. Prior to that, there was currency of a sort, in the form of bronze axe heads, knife blades, bracelets, etc, made to a standard weight. For smaller transactions, you had to either barter, or weigh out some metal. Alyattes (or more likely, some long-forgotten technician) was the first to come up with the idea of very small pieces of weighed metal, stamped with pictures (so you couldn't trim off the edges). As one might expect, this proved of enormous benefit for shopkeepers. The ability to make easy micropayments also led to a huge boom in prostitution. When Herodotus went to see his tomb a few hundred years later, there was an engraving listing the people who'd contributed to build it. Prostitutes and shopkeepers were the two most prominent classes.

*****

In Manila, there's a "KKK Restaurant".

*****

An interesting article on the economic dislocation caused by the abolition of slavery in the West Indies.

Comments

[nodrog]

It caused the “oldest profession” to be noticeable, as you say, but I doubt it alone caused a real surge in sale volume.

As was said to a buddy of mine one night in Saigon, “Hey, Joe, I love you, no shit - you buy me drink?”

Medieval peasants paid their rent “in kind,” handing over chickens and produce &c.  Even today, “gifts” from admirers are commonplace, and not reported to the IRS…

[rain_gryphon]

I think, though, that the rise of wealthy prostitutes - the sort who could chip in to build a popular king's tomb - begins pretty much with the invention of coinage. Temple prostitution certainly took off as a major industry in about the sixth Century BC. The city of Corinth became wealthy from (among other things) their Temple of Aphrodite. All through the Classical period as well, there was an absolute drought of prostitutes just down the road in Sparta, where the men were forbidden by their religion from handling gold or silver.

As well, coins made prostitution (and everything else) much more easily taxable.

The National Archives UK

[nodrog]

O my goodness.  G' bye, I'm gonna vanish into this site…

Re: The National Archives UK

[rain_gryphon]

Heh. Have fun!

[nodrog]

A long time ago, I refereed a role-playing game in a post-apocalypse setting that used bullets as currency!  It worked weirdly well - they already come in caliber “denominations,” they can't be forged by any available means, they have intrinsic value - yet can still be used as currency even if they're duds!  It was fun.