If we told our ancestors that we use paper and plastic for our shopping today, they would probably ask, “Why? And what is plastic? In ancient times, money was not at all the same as it is now. People have used a wide variety of objects to satisfy their material needs. The strangest and most unusual of them can be found in this article.
US military trades clothes for military secrets
It seems to us that being a spy is very cool and dangerous. A muffled tone of voice, codenames, cunning devices, beautiful girls … But the reality is not at all the same as in the James Bond films. Here is the story of a real spy, a military intelligence officer in Vietnam named John Wint.
In the 1960s, Vint was tasked with obtaining important information from local residents about the Viet Cong. But he faced a problem: how to pay the natives for this information? They just didn't need money. Jewelry or other luxury items could draw attention to the spy's cover. Food would not be suitable either, as a serious shortage of it would have caused unnecessary noise. Vint could not pay for the services of local residents with bitcoins, since they simply did not exist then.
Then, quite by accident, Vint's wife sent him a piece of the Western world - a Sears fashion catalog. The decision came suddenly: why not give the locals the opportunity to dress beautifully? You can laugh as much as you want, but imagine that you've spent your entire life in the jungle, and suddenly you have free access to thousands of pages of the fashion catalog. Aboriginal people could not resist, and soon the system "clothes in exchange for information" was already working like clockwork. This went on for almost two years until the area became too dangerous for scouts.
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The whole ancient world revolved around salt
For our ancestors, salt was almost everything. She helped keep the meat from spoilage, prolonging its shelf life and allowing it to be taken with you on long voyages. It protected wounds from infections. She forced traders and researchers to leave their home countries and go in search of foreign goods. The salt was so valuable that the soldiers were even paid for their service.
So you probably won't be surprised to learn that the ancestors used this product as money in exchange for a wide variety of goods. In some countries of the world, salt was literally worth its weight in gold - their cost was equal, that is, an ounce of salt was worth the same as an ounce of gold. Remember this the next time you salt your soup!
In Italy, Parmesan is still a substitute for money
Imagine that you are a farmer with your own dairy farm and you are producing your own cheese. If your specialty is Parmesan, then problems cannot be avoided. After all, this product takes time, from 18 months to three years, to mature. Only then will the cheese be ready for sale. And if you, God forbid, cut a cheese head before it ripens, you will be left without a source of income, and your children will have nothing to eat. Parmesan is called "the king of all cheeses" and is extremely capricious in production. Any defect in the head will automatically render the product unusable.
Fortunately, a bank in Italy has figured out how to use such a long maturation period for Parmesan to suit its needs and the interests of its customers. A bank called Credito Emiliano accepts huge cheese heads as collateral for loans. His clients - cheesemakers - simply wait for their sources of income to mature, while the bank receives its interest.
Everything is completely serious
Since 1953, Credito Emiliano has put a unique serial number on each parmesan head, which will allow it to be tracked and returned in the event of theft (after all, a valuable deposit). They even have a special cheese department, Magazzini Generali delle Tagliate, which is responsible for the quality of the product.
By the way, cheese is by no means the only regional product that the bank considered a worthy alternative to money. Credito Emiliano also considered prosciutto ham and olive oil as collateral. But, since it is much easier to steal a bottle of butter or a loaf of ham than a 40-kilogram head of hard cheese, they decided to remain loyal to him. By the way, the bank positions itself as a financial company that takes care of the manufacturer and supports small businesses.
Knives and shovels - the currency of ancient China
Back in the 8th-9th century, the Chinese began to use bronze knives and shovels as currency. Of course, not real knives, but just replicas. Each of them had a certain denomination, so that it was clear how much and what could be bought for it.
Other regions of ancient China supported this concept, but used small shovels as money. I must say that it looked even more creepy than paying with knives. While knives were more commonly accepted in the regions where they were most popular (probably among warriors and cutthroats), shovels were used in agricultural regions, among honest farmers.
Game cards instead of money
Today we prefer electronic money and plastic cards to a stack of cash in our wallet. But the same cannot be said about people who lived several centuries ago. They liked to have cash - that is, money in the most "material" form. Therefore, their outrage can be understood when the inhabitants of one of the colonies of New France in Canada experienced a shortage of cash.
It happened in 1685, after the shipment of money from the homeland was delayed indefinitely. There was nothing to pay thousands of workers, sabotages and strikes began. It was necessary to urgently do something, otherwise the situation threatened to develop into a serious mass riot.
Leg of meat for a jack of hearts
The story goes that it was then that the local governor came up with an original idea: to use game cards as banknotes - until real money comes. Of course, this was a serious risk, akin to insanity. Judge for yourself: what would you say to an employer if he decided one day to give you a deck of cards instead of a salary? However, people simply did not have a choice: they had to either accept this stupid idea, or die of hunger.
The most interesting thing is that the crazy plan worked. Each card was assigned a certain monetary denomination, and so that there would be no doubt about the authenticity of such banknotes, they were certified with seals and signatures. Cards were used everywhere: in shops, banks, factories. And six months later, when the normal banknotes finally arrived, they were gradually withdrawn from circulation. True, not for long. I had to return to maps twice more: in 1686 and in 1690.
Alcohol is the engine of progress for entire empires
Looking back over the years, it can be seen that alcoholic beverages (beer in most cases) were often the only pay for workers. Archaeologists have found evidence of this in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Yes, for building pyramids, each worker was given several liters of beer a day.
And almost all of Australia's economy was built on rum. The workers were paid with them, the farmers exchanged their entire harvest for it, and a whole division of officers built a good business of buying and reselling rum. They even renamed themselves from the New South Wales Corps to the Rum Corps. It took very little time for this drink to squeeze money on the currency pedestal.
And this was not only the case in antiquity. The last use of beer as currency was recorded in the 1980s in Angola, when their local money began to depreciate and the value of goods skyrocketed. To prevent economic decline and prevent people from starving, the authorities decided to pay with beer, which was already very popular on the black market.
What example of an alternative currency seemed the most interesting to you?
Author: Diana Kudryavih