An English friend of mine, a novellist who writes about the
Elizabethan period, has decided (perhaps taking a page out of Margaret
Attwood's book) that she wants to do something on money.
I warned her about reinventing the wheel and advised her to make a
search of existing material. The excerpt from her letter, below, lists
some of her concerns. [I have no idea what she means about 'treating
an economy as an ecology'.]
If any contributors to this List can help I should be much obliged,
and would pass on their answers to my friend.
QUOTE:
I have so many questions about money.
The one about the Roman empire's system of state and private credit is
something I've been wondering about for years - IF they used a credit
note system and IF the temples (especially the temple of Apollo) acted
as clearing houses for them, that would account for why Christian
rioters normally burnt the records kept in the temples and also might
explain why the Empire fell apart only 20 years after becoming fully
Christian. Has anyone done any kind of study on this?
Is there any evidence that the legend of Midas is an account of the
first major inflation caused by the King's debauching of the currency
(everything he touched turned to gold... Lydia was the first to use a
touchstone and the first to come up with currency that was guaranteed
a certain purity by the state.)
Has anybody published any work that treats an economy as an ecology?
Did they run any models?
I know there has been some work done on macaques, teaching them to use
tokens that buy grapes as currency. Do any other animals do this? Do
any of them do it naturally? Who did the stuff with the macaques?
Anthony Waterman