BEYOND BITCOIN. The Future of Digital Currency. Part IX The Prehistory of Money / The Superorganism

The prehistory of money

"I am about to speculate about how money came to be. I considered leaving this part out because it is so odd that you may find it unbelievable. But I have been right about other things, so just go with me on this for a bit. Besides, what I’m about to explain is all evidence-based." Sean H. Worthington

Looking at the evidence

Let’s go back 50,000 years, to Europe.

There was no farming. On the ice age tundra, there was nothing to eat except mammoth and other plant-eating mammals. Money wasn’t needed. The nomadic people of the Paleolithic era cared only about food, shelter, and sex. They were interested in tools, but they really couldn’t afford to put much effort into research or development of new technologies. People would live their whole lives without experiencing any changes in the way things were done, and would never see a new invention.

Like today, men and women differed in interests, but all were interested in companionship and friends. Female humans, unlike almost all animals, had sex socially. In theory a woman could copulate almost all year long, but with only one fertile day a month. But because sperm can live for up to five days, the actual fertility window was a little longer.

Fifty thousand years ago, people were constantly on the move. They lived in small family groups and they created temporary camps. In the camps lived the very young, the women, and the very few who were lucky enough to grow old. Adult men, however, did not stay in the camps much, except for a small group of what we might call Alpha males. These Alpha males were probably chosen by the matriarchs and were expected to guard the camp but they also impregnated the fertile women.

It was that elite class of Alpha males who did all the impregnating. I surmise that only 20% of men in those days ever had children. (With the invention of money, this would later increase to 60% and give money users a biological advantage over non-users. Genetic research supports this.) Women were probably pregnant most of the time, but when they were not, they had to act accordingly.

Back then, for one week a month, the women would - like mindless zombies - stop having sex with the Beta males and coax the Alpha males to secret rendezvous. They may have even blocked out the memories of these trysts to make it easier to lie about it to the Beta males to prevent them from becoming jealous.

The Beta males were expected to go out and do the very dangerous work of hunting mammoths and other large game. Women and the Alpha males probably did all the construction of shelters, crafting of tools, and making of weapons, clothing and shoes, while the Beta males were away doing all the dangerous killing of wild animals.

The fact that women did not have to hunt increased the number of children that were born because the women didn’t have to take risks, and stayed in camp to raise children. The Beta males would trade meat for sex and companionship. It wasn’t prostitution, but more like an open marriage.

However, the Beta males did not get any women pregnant. For Beta males, there was only a 1 in 30 chance that they would get a woman pregnant - if she wasn’t pregnant already. And since the Beta male was off hunting quite often, she probably was. If she was ovulating, she would stop having sex with all but the Alpha males. If the Beta males could slip some sperm in a few days before ovulation, he might have a small chance.

But either way, the woman would eat well without the risk of hunting.

Over 144 Paleolithic figurines of the female form, referred to as Venus figurines (Venus figurine is any carved or molded figure of the female form that dates back to Paleolithic times. The name has no connection to the Roman goddess Venus), have been found that date to 35 - 11,000 years ago. Some think that these are goddess figures. But some figurines show a woman as bound—not what you would expect for a deity. These figures meet all the requirements of money, and support the hypothesis that money has been around in Europe for tens of thousands of years.

This Venus figurine, shows a woman with bound hands.

They also represent what was really valuable in the Stone Age. The Beta males had a problem because, when they killed a mammoth, there was too much meat to carry back to the camp, and too much meat for the camp to eat before it went rotten. Most of the meat simply went to waste. This was a problem because killing mammoths was a dangerous endeavor, and wasting meat meant that the Beta males would have to risk their lives more than was necessary.

Money - in the form of Venus figures - would come along and change this.

Back at the camps, tribal members would create Venus figurines of each of the attractive females and give these figurines to the Beta males who went hunting.

If they ran into Beta males from other families who had been successful in hunting, they could trade the figurines for the location of the kill. This allowed the Beta males from one family to get meat from the Beta males of another without having to carry out the risky business of making the kill.

And what did the new owner of the Venus figure get? He got to lie with the woman the figurine represented—perhaps on days of the month when she was likely to get pregnant. He also risked his life less, so there were more chances of getting a woman pregnant in the future.

Most men never had a chance to have children back then, but the Venus figures gave them an advantage!

Now the top Beta males who were good hunters could have access to the women of other tribes, and have a chance at reproduction. Each figurine was worth $25,000 in food in the equivalent of today's economy, but cost very little to create.

Over time, the men who used this Venus currency had more children.

And why would women back then want to sleep with Beta males from other tribes?

In most cases, the women were already pregnant with the children of Alpha males and really had nothing to lose by having sex with the Betas. (The alpha males back then were more like today’s pimps. They were oversexed. They had all the women they wanted, and they did not hunt or do dangerous work.)

It was the women who wanted the Alpha sperm, and the Alphas learned that they could demand meat in exchange. This forced the women to trade with the Beta males to get meat to pay off the Alphas. The women exchanged meat for cooking, shelter, comfort, companionship, and sex. Any tribes that did not use this money were not as successful and thus did not carry their genes into future populations.

That human females don’t get pregnant every time they have sex is a unique feature shared with a short list of species that includes bonobos monkeys and some species of bats. This behavior allows for social sex, or sex for the purpose of building social relationships.

When did this system go out of fashion? Around 10,000 years ago the mammoths died off and the system no longer worked.

By that time, societies had evolved to accept other monetary systems, and those other systems were put in place.

When farming was invented, the Betas were able to capture and keep their own women, and the rate of men having children went up substantially, to nearly 100%. The Alphas were locked out, except for their own wives.

Fifty thousand years ago, humans could have all the babies they wanted because humans were killed so often by predators that there was no chance of them having too many children. They had an r-reproductive strategy (an r-reproductive strategy is one that focuses on reproducing in a high volume that will ensure survival of the species.

A k-reproductive strategy occurs in a stable or predictable environment where competition for limited resources is crucial) as opposed to the k-reproductive strategy that we have today. Women gave birth to many babies over a short life span. If a male wanted to sire a child, he needed a woman's token.

The first coins were not made of silver, but of mammoth tusk. They did not have the heads of state on them - they had vulvas.

A mammoth tusk coin found in the Paleolithic tomb of a male. From Czech Republic, circa 26,000 B.C.

"I believe these coins were used to purchase sex, with coins obtained by selling the location of a mammoth kill. Sean H. Worthington

Much of a civilization’s wealth and prosperity depends on the monetary system it uses.

The Superorganism

A superorganism is an organism made up from many organisms. The term is used most often to describe a social unit of eusocial (an eusocial group is one where specialized activities are segregated for increased efficiency) animals or insects, where division of labor is highly specialized and where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods.

Money is absolutely necessary for humankind to exist in numbers. Even if we were forced to use crappy inflated money (like the Venezuelan Bolivar and its runaway inflation) we would still use it because bad money is better than no money.

But there is a question that I don’t know the answer to: Does the society create the money, or does the money create the society?

Just in case the money creates the society, I have created the Constitution of the CloudPeople. This Constitution builds on everything we have learned since the framing of America's Constitution. If you plan on overthrowing your government, you may want to check out this constitution because it is just about guaranteed to make your country as rich, prosperous, and happy as humanly possible.

The right to use tools, including money

One thing that separates human beings from animals is our use of money, and money is critical to our survival.

Money provides a system of justice for people who participate in trade - justice in the sense that people should get what they deserve, and that those who work efficiently deserve to have more economic rewards than those who are not as efficient or productive.

Much of a civilization’s wealth and prosperity depends on the monetary system it uses. By choosing the correct system, not only can America be much wealthier than other countries, we can also develop new and innovative types of money that propel us into even more wealth.

Later we will discuss the most ethical and prosperous monetary and banking systems. Here we establish the fact that people are money users and money use is our natural right.

Note that there needn’t be a government to have money, and that money existed long before governments. As humans, we have a nature. We are thinking animals. We have evolved with large brains that allow us to survive in a variety of habitats.

Since the Age of Reason and the American Revolution of 1776, fueled by the Deist (Deism is the belief in a supreme being (God) coupled with the belief that God does not interfere in the activities of Man) philosophies of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine, liberal societies have come to understand that reason and rational thought are the most ethical means for us to organize and rule ourselves. In stark contrast are the Islamic Jihadists who believe that their magic book gives them the authority to slaughter anyone who dares so much as draw a cartoon of their leader.

We rational Libertarians understand that we must debate all aspects of the decisions we make and look carefully at the facts, keeping our emotions at bay, resisting mindless religious, and political ideology, and instead embrace reason.

We must be skeptical and question everything.

When someone (teacher, parent, preacher or politician) tells us what is true - we should not just accept it. Look at what the critics say, and examine all sides of the argument. As Thomas Paine said, we must not think that something is true just because it is tradition.

Remember that solutions to problems sometimes seem very strange at first. If the solutions were obvious, we may have thought of them long ago. Do not avoid conflict.

We must challenge each other’s thinking. We Americans questioned everything during the American Revolution, with good results.

Let us start by declaring who we are and what we want.

To be continued..........

Sean H. Worthington PhD ABD for CloudCoin Consortium.