14

mine, and the wealth of Lydian kings Midas, Croesus,

and Giges is famous to this da y .

A few centuries later, the Greek king Alexander the

Great conquered Egypt, Persia and m uc h of India, fund-

ing his sp ectacular conquest by plundering Egyptian and

P ersian temples, ﬁlled with assemblages of low-v elocity

collectibles, and melting them do wn in to high-velocity

coins. More eﬃcient and encompassing mark et economies

as well as more eﬃcien t tax collection sprung up in his

w ak e.

T ribute pa ymen ts did not form by themselv es a closed

lo op of collectibles. These were only v aluable if they

ultimately could b e used b y the victors for something

else, such as marriage, trade, or collateral. Ho w ev er, vic-

tors could coerce the v anquished in to manufacturing for

obtaining collectibles, even if it did not serve the v an-

quished’s v olun tary in terests.

X. DISPUTES AND REMEDIES

Ancien t hun ter-gatherers did not ha v e our mo dern tort

or criminal la w, but they did hav e an analogous means

of settling disputes, often judged b y clan or tribal lead-

ers or vote, that co v ered what mo dern law calls crimes

and torts. Settling disputes through punishments or pay-

men ts sanction by the clans of the disputing parties sub-

stituted for cycles of rev enge or v endetta w ars. Most

pre-mo dern cultures, ranging from the Iriquois in Amer-

ica to the pre-Christian Germanic p eoples, decided that

pa ymen t w as b etter than punishment. Prices (e.g. the

Germanic "weregeld" and Iriquois blo od money) were as-

signed to all actionable oﬀenses, ranging from p ett y theft

to rap e to murder. Where money was av ailable, the pay-

men t took the form of money . Liv esto c k was used in

herding cultures. Otherwise, paymen t of collectibles were

the most commonly used remedy .

The pa ymen t of remedies for damages in a la wsuit or

similar complaint led to the same kind of problem of

triple coincidence of ev en t, supply , and demand as o c-

curred in inheritance, marriage, and tribute. The judg-

men t of the case had to coincide with the ability of the

plain tiﬀ to pay the damages as well as the opp ortunit y

and desire of the defendan t to b eneﬁt from them. If the

remedy was a consumable the plain tiﬀ already had plen t y

of, the remedy still served as a punishment but would not

lik ely satisfy the defendant - and thus would not curb the

cycle of violence. Thus, w e here again the v alue added by

collectibles - in this case, in making p ossible the remedy

to resolv e a dispute or terminate a cycle of rev enge.

Dispute remedies w ould not form a closed lo op if the

pa ymen ts served to entirely eliminate vendettas. How-

ev er, if the paymen ts did not completely damp the

v endetta, the paymen ts could form a cycle follo wing the

cycle of rev enge. F or this reason, it is p ossible that the

institution reached an equilibrium when it had reduced

but not eliminated cycles of revenge until the adven t of

more densely connected trading net w orks.

XI. A TTRIBUTES OF COLLECTIBLES

Since humans evolv ed in small, largely self-suﬃcien t,

and m utually antagonistic trib es, the use of collectibles to

reduce the need for fav or-trac king, and to make p ossible

the other h uman institutions of w ealth transfer w e hav e

explored, was far more imp ortan t than the scale problems

of barter for most of the timespan of our sp ecies. Indeed,

collectibles pro vided a fundamental improv emen t to the

w orkings of recipro cal altruism, allo wing humans to co-

op erate in wa ys unav ailable to other species. F or them,

recipro cal altruism is severely limited by unreliable mem-

ory . Some other sp ecies ha v e large brains, build their own

homes, or make and use to ols. No other sp ecies has pro-

duced such an improv emen t to the w orkings of recipro cal

altruism. The evidence indicates this new developmen t

had matured b y 40,000 B.P .

Menger called this ﬁrst money an "intermediate com-

mo dit y" - what this paper calls collectibles. An artifact

useful for other things, such as cutting, could also be

used as a collectible. How ev er, once institutions in v olv-

ing wealth transfer b ecame v aluable, collectibles would b e

man ufactured just for their collectible properties. What

are these properties? F or a particular commo dit y to be

c hosen as a v aluable collectible, it w ould ha v e had, rela-

tiv e to pro ducts less v aluable as collectibles, at least the

follo wing desirable qualities:

1 - More secure from accidential loss and theft. F or

most of history this mean t carriable on the p erson and

easy to hide.

2 - Harder to forge its v alue. An imp ortan t subset of

these are pro ducts that are unforgeably costly , and there-

fore considered v aluable, for reasons explained b elo w.

3 - This v alue was more accurately approximated by

simple observ ations or measuremen ts. These observ a-

tions w ould ha v e had more reliable in tegrit y y et ha v e

b een less exp ensiv e.

Humans the world ov er are strongly motiv ated to col-

lect items that better satisfy these prop erties. Some of

this motiv ation probably includes genetically evolv ed in-

stincts. Suc h ob jects are collected for the sheer plea-

sure of collecting them (not for an y particularly go od ex-

plicit and proximate reasons), and such pleasure is nearly

univ ersal across h uman cultures. One of the immedi-

ate pro ximate motiv ations is decoration. A ccording to

Dr. Mary C. Stiner, an archaeologist at the Univ ersit y of