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Platystemon posted:Rai, from Yap, are probably the strangest form of currency I’ve seen. My favorite tidbit about the Rai stones quote:The physical location of the stone may not matter—though the ownership of a particular stone changes, the stone itself is rarely moved due to its weight and risk of damage. The names of previous owners are passed down to the new one. In one instance, a large rai being transported by canoe and outrigger was accidentally dropped and sank to the sea floor. Although it was never seen again, everyone agreed that the rai must still be there, so it continued to be transacted as genuine currency.What is important is that ownership of the rai is clear to everyone, not that the rai is physically transferred or even physically accessible to either party in the transfer. Is everyone cool with the fact that I still have money, it's just on the bottom of the Ocean? Yeah? Good deal.
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Jul 29, 2016 19:07
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Shbobdb posted:Money didn't work quite the same way in the middle ages. That link is amazing, love the working out that Henry V spent the medieval equivalent of £815 million on arrows for the French campaign.
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Jul 29, 2016 19:12
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Lockback posted:
To be fair, I haven't seen most of my money either but everyone still agrees that I have them.
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Jul 29, 2016 19:16
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chitoryu12 posted:Yeah, but wouldn't the government still need to pay the fletchers for the arrows they produce on contract? The link Shbobdb posted has numbers for a specific contract.
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Jul 29, 2016 19:32
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Lockback posted:My favorite tidbit about the Rai stones The Rai are basically the gold standard of pre-computer bitcoins.
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Jul 29, 2016 21:04
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Snapchat A Titty posted:This is a total guess, but presumably you either made arrows yourself (if you were poor) or hired a fletcher to do it (if you were rich). There wasn't a sizable middle-class yet in the middle ages, so there wasn't really a market for a lot of things. I think it was a bizarre mish mash of making them yourself, bartering for the parts you couldn't, and sharing the kill with whoever produced the arrow. Like the town smith made basically everybody's tools but wasn't necessarily paid in coin. He still needed to eat so he's probably be willing to trade some tools for several loaves of bread and a chicken or whatever. Granted hunting at the time was primarily a noble thing; most people were subsistence farmers so the point was largely moot. Any meat they ate probably came from farm animals.
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Jul 30, 2016 00:00
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I think it was a bizarre mish mash of making them yourself, bartering for the parts you couldn't, and sharing the kill with whoever produced the arrow. Like the town smith made basically everybody's tools but wasn't necessarily paid in coin. He still needed to eat so he's probably be willing to trade some tools for several loaves of bread and a chicken or whatever. Also most, if not all, meadows, fields, & forests were owned by a local lord, the church, or the king himself, and poaching was usually punishable by death. Commoners basically didn't get to hunt & so had very little use for arrows in general.
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Jul 30, 2016 00:08
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It was the differing local scarcity that made it valuable. This is why trade networks happened; salt flats, dried lakes, and the places that rock salt can be mined are useful for gently caress all other than salt. However, salt was literally impossible to get in some places. Others it was prohibitively costly to get locally. Everybody needed salt but few people had an easy supply. Of course you can't catch fish on a salt flat soooooo if you want fish you gots to trade but hey that one culture that has good fishing water can't make enough salt to preserve it. This other culture makes pots good for storing stuff in so hey let's each do our thing, trade the results, and we'll all have long term stores of salted fish. Unless this translation is way off, salt cost 100 denarii communes per modius in 300 AD, cheaper than flour. That's equivalent to about $20/pound of salt in modern terms. So at some point salt got really cheap, unless that translation is wrong.
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Jul 30, 2016 04:03
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Chamale posted:Unless this translation is way off, salt cost 100 denarii communes per modius in 300 AD, cheaper than flour. That's equivalent to about $20/pound of salt in modern terms. So at some point salt got really cheap, unless that translation is wrong. The romans also had an extensive trade network that would have driven down prices though. Not so simple when you're trading across national borders with different currency.
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Jul 30, 2016 06:48
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I think it was a bizarre mish mash of making them yourself, bartering for the parts you couldn't, and sharing the kill with whoever produced the arrow. Like the town smith made basically everybody's tools but wasn't necessarily paid in coin. He still needed to eat so he's probably be willing to trade some tools for several loaves of bread and a chicken or whatever. Subsistence economies work in a different way than capitalist ones, and villages (with some exceptions, like the HRE) primarily functioned as subsistence economies. The goal in a subsistence economy is to survive, and increase your moral economy with your neighbors. So, say your neighbors have a bad harvest and you pitch them grain, so that in the future, you can go down the road and ask your neighbors for help because that one time you did the same thing. In this way town smiths might have worked too - even if they weren't strictly paid in money, they were paid in some form of favor, be that grain, a dinner, some future help at a later date. Additionally, there's a real incentive in this proto-capitalist economy to horde real money, because you can buy anything with real money, but all your daily needs can be paid for in another way (like grain). So, basically, save the money for when poo poo gets bad, pay for everything else in favors. You could also add in the fact that the legality of the times made real money not that useful. Serfs, in many countries, were completely tied to their land, and had no real way out of their serfdom. Consequently, if you spend your entire life in a subsistence economy, you might not ever have any need of real money. Conversely, say something really bad happens (like an apocalyptic spread diseasee, the passing of an army, or a natural event) money may not be useful to you, period. A Festivus Miracle has a new favorite as of 08:24 on Jul 30, 2016 |
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Jul 30, 2016 08:22
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For the Rai stones we really need to bring Graeber into it. They are a form of currency but what they represent is completely different from the semiotic connections we make with "money". It's essentially an entirely different thing.
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Jul 30, 2016 08:52
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Shbobdb posted:For the Rai stones we really need to bring Graeber into it. They are a form of currency but what they represent is completely different from the semiotic connections we make with "money". It's essentially an entirely different thing. Well, at the very least explain what you're talking about, then.
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Jul 30, 2016 10:08
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Carbon dioxide posted:Well, at the very least explain what you're talking about, then. No don't, that currency was antimemeti–aw gently caress.
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Jul 30, 2016 10:13
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The first cloning of an animal happened in 1885. Hans Driesch discovered that if you divided the the cells of the embryo of a sea urchin each cell developed into a fully formed sea urchin.
Alhazred has a new favorite as of 16:24 on Jul 30, 2016 |
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Jul 30, 2016 14:27
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According to QI, he used a lasso made from a baby's hair.
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Jul 30, 2016 16:14
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A White Guy posted:In this way town smiths might have worked too - even if they weren't strictly paid in money, they were paid in some form of favor, be that grain, a dinner, some future help at a later date. Additionally, there's a real incentive in this proto-capitalist economy to horde real money, because you can buy anything with real money, but all your daily needs can be paid for in another way (like grain). So, basically, save the money for when poo poo gets bad, pay for everything else in favors. Good old Gresham's law.
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Jul 30, 2016 16:16
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Carbon dioxide posted:Well, at the very least explain what you're talking about, then. Here are some things we associate with money that don't apply to Rai stones: 1) fungibility. I can give you a $100 bill and you can give me a $100 bill and we would still have $100. 2) divisibility. I can give you a $100 bill and you can give me 100 $1 bills and we would still each have $100. 3) universality. With my $100 I can buy shoes, gas, food, whatever I want really. Even things that aren't theoretically on sale can be purchased with my modern money if I can convince the person with the thing I want and this is considered a respectable practice.
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Jul 30, 2016 19:00
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:According to QI, he used a lasso made from a baby's hair. Given that he was german and it was the 19th century that's pretty tame.
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Jul 30, 2016 21:19
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Maybe it was still attached to the baby.
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Jul 30, 2016 21:27
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One can only hope.
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Jul 30, 2016 21:56
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Shbobdb posted:Here are some things we associate with money that don't apply to Rai stones: Ohhhh... sorry I understood you wrong in the previous post. I thought you were saying the 'Graeber' was another (fictional) unit of currency, probably invented by mr. Graeber, and that was the one with weird properties, much weirder than the Rai stones.
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Jul 30, 2016 22:32
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If you haven't read Debt the first 5000 years, you should fix that.
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Jul 31, 2016 02:26
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Introduction to the Science of Ceremony of the Great Lords, by Julius Bernhard von Rohr (1733), p. 19 posted:It is a strange thing that the Kings of Spain are bound in this regard and are at much less liberty than their subjects, insofar as they, following the introduction of those courtly rules more than a century ago, are to go to bed at 10pm in the summer and 9pm in the winter. Historians tell us the following: when King Charles II's first wife Marie Louise arrived in Madrid and did not want to follow those rules, saying instead that the best time to go to bed was when you felt like it, it happened often that her ladies-in-waiting started to undress her even while she was still having dinner, and without asking first. Some started to undo her hair, others crept underneath the table and removed her skirt, and then she was brought to bed with such speed that sometimes she didn't realise it until it was too late.* If you can read 18th-century German and are interested in the highly complex proceedings and rituals of Baroque European courts, then this book is well worth a read. As far as I can see (I've only begun reading it myself) it's unfortunately very Protestant-centric, though - Catholic courts tended to be, if anything, even more complex and ritualistic than their Protestant counterparts. * the proper translation would be "she didn't even know what hit her", but I felt that this would be too informal
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Aug 5, 2016 19:09
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No wonder they were off on wars all the time, I'd have gone compeltely round the bend if that was my life.
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Aug 5, 2016 23:38
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A White Guy posted:Subsistence economies work in a different way than capitalist ones, and villages (with some exceptions, like the HRE) primarily functioned as subsistence economies. The goal in a subsistence economy is to survive, and increase your moral economy with your neighbors. So, say your neighbors have a bad harvest and you pitch them grain, so that in the future, you can go down the road and ask your neighbors for help because that one time you did the same thing. They were more 'agrarian' than 'subsistence'. When you're dealing with the pre-Industrial world, comparing valuation is like comparing apples to fish. It changed drastically over time and place, but we can compare them to themselves according to what they said about it. The very poorest, serfs, were essentially slaves bound to the land. Freemen owned their house and some of their land; the produce of some of that land was given to the local power that be. A tenth went to the Church (tithe). When serfdom was abolished in much of Europe, the very poorest now were those who had no animals and had to spin, weave and make their own clothing, thus the term 'homespun'. It was a term of derision, not warmth like it is today. There was a middle class, though they didn't call it that. Merchants, traders, guildsmen could be very wealthy, wealthier even than the local PTB. This is why we see 'sumptuary laws', fining people for dressing above their station. While technically peasants, they were a far cry from the average goat farmer. They might be called city or town folk to distinguish them from the general laborer, or by their trade to show they were skilled, literate and probably fairly well-off. Remember that 'La Gioncada'--the Mona Lisa--is a portrait of a merchant's wife.
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Aug 6, 2016 06:46
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System Metternich posted:* the proper translation would be "she didn't even know what hit her", but I felt that this would be too informal
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Aug 6, 2016 09:54
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Translator chat: in the original it says "daß sie manchmahl nicht gewust, wie ihr geschehen wäre". The closest translation I could think of that would convey that meaning was "did not know what hit her", but this didn't fit stylistically into the rest of the paragraph, I felt. Generally speaking you're right of course, early modern dudes and gals didn't necessarily bother too much with "proper" language  Another one from the book (the very next paragraph, in fact): quote:Some princely spouses sleep together in one chamber, while others sleep in separate beds and even chambers, and with many ceremonies the princely husbands have to ask for permission to be able to spend the night together with their wifes. In Spain the king is said to enter thus: he doesn't wear slippers but shoes, as well as a black coat instead of a nightgown (for both nightgown and slippers are uncommon there). His broquet or shield* hangs down from his left arm, as well as a bottle tied to his wrist which is not for drink, but instead for another nightly service. In his left hand he is carrying a small lantern, and in the right a large rapier. After thus arming himself, he may enter the queen's chamber. Whether these ceremonies, of which Herr Lünig writes in his great study on ceremonies and which he might have taken from an old travelogue, are still followed nowadays, I doubt very much. *NB: I have no idea what that's supposed to be. Are they talking about a real soldier's shield?
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Aug 6, 2016 10:25
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Perhaps Wappenschild (escutcheon)?
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Aug 6, 2016 12:49
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Don't know if this is the right place to post, but seems like there's a bunch of historians in here. Anyway, was out camping on Dartmoor, England this weekend and spotted this strange rock on a secluded island in the middle of a stream. Layman's knowledge makes me think they're runes, but I have no idea how to translate it. Anyone read runic? I've taken a bunch of photos, including an close-up panorama and did my best to transcribe it. Apologies for the relative crudity of the transcription, parts of the stone were covered in moss and I had to decide by touch.    
Necrothatcher has a new favorite as of 17:08 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 10:35
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Mr. Flunchy posted:Don't know if this is the right place to post, but seems like there's a bunch of historians in here. Anyway, was out camping on Dartmoor, England this weekend and spotted this strange rock on a secluded island in the middle of a stream. Layman's knowledge makes me think they're runes, but I have no idea how to translate it. Anyone read runic? You could check with the National Park there. There's lots of Viking rune stones associated with Dartmoor, so they should have someone on staff that can fill you in on it if no one here can.
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Aug 8, 2016 17:02
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I can't make out all of it, but the middle bit says "...if he be worthy..."
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Aug 8, 2016 17:16
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Aphrodite posted:I can't make out all of it, but the middle bit says "...if he be worthy..." Update: just discovered I can now yell loud enough to knock people over.
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Aug 8, 2016 17:31
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I'm pretty sure those stones are nothing. That is normal weathering of the stones in that area from rain, sea salt, and heat cycles. Natural rock formation, nothing to get worked up over.
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Aug 8, 2016 17:53
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Mr. Flunchy posted:Don't know if this is the right place to post, but seems like there's a bunch of historians in here. Anyway, was out camping on Dartmoor, England this weekend and spotted this strange rock on a secluded island in the middle of a stream. Layman's knowledge makes me think they're runes, but I have no idea how to translate it. Anyone read runic? The first line reads "one must not forget to drink his ovaltine" but that sentence doesn't make any sense to me
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Aug 8, 2016 17:57
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Jastiger posted:I'm pretty sure those stones are nothing. That is normal weathering of the stones in that area from rain, sea salt, and heat cycles. Natural rock formation, nothing to get worked up over. Thanks for the translation, but why would anybody write this on random stones in runish?
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Aug 8, 2016 18:03
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System Metternich posted:Thanks for the translation, but why would anybody write this on random stones in runish? It's the viking equivalent of a sign saying "Nothing to see here, move along", duh.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:04
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ArchangeI posted:It's the viking equivalent of a sign saying "Nothing to see here, move along", duh. "This stone intentionally left blank"
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Aug 8, 2016 18:10
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There were a bunch of Vikings around this area around 997AD too:quote:As described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in AD 997, during the reign of Aelthelred II, Vikings, having landed at what is now Plymouth at the mouth of the River Tamar, travelled northwards and strongly attacked Lydford (presumably for silver and coins), and then returned south, destroying and plundering Tavistock Abbey on their way. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not state that Lydford was captured by the Vikings in that attack, and John Allan (2002) has stated that the lack of a break, at that date, in the coin-minting activity at Lydford suggests that the Vikings did not gain access into Lydford. That Lydford-Viking battle of AD 997 is commemorated by a Roadside Plaque, showing a Danish axe on a Saxon shield, at the southern entrance to the Saxon town area (a little way down the hill) and by a Viking-style Runic Stone carved, from local granite, in the field next to the Castle.The plaque was made by a Lydford resident, John Luttman, in 1990, and the Runic Stone was set up in AD 1997 as part of the commemorative 1000th anniversary of the Viking attack, but this time in the presence of a group of peaceful and welcomed Danish visitors. So if I'd hazard a guess that's the work of some bored soldier camping on his way to (or from) Lydford.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:14
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Jastiger posted:I'm pretty sure those stones are nothing. That is normal weathering of the stones in that area from rain, sea salt, and heat cycles. Natural rock formation, nothing to get worked up over. Nice try, trickster.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:24
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I've got a rough translation now:quote:[illegible] THE GODS WILL [illegible] Apparently it's more likely to be Celtic than Viking. Edit: the 'celtic sprig' alphabet to be precise. Necrothatcher has a new favorite as of 19:23 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 19:04
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