The Artifact: Edible Currencies

In this episode of STBYM’s The Artifact, Robert discusses money you can eat or drink...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
this is the artifact, a short form series from Stuff
to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on particular objects, ideas,
and moments in time. When we think about modern physical money,

(00:25):
we're generally thinking about something that has very little material
use in and of itself. It's not that a common
copper nickel clad copper quarter is actually worth twenty five cents,
but rather it's accepted as a medium of exchange for
that amount and issued by the governing authority. The common
us quarter was once made of silver, but the value

(00:46):
of the metal now exceeds the value represented by the coin,
as pointed out by Brian Fagan and Eleanor Robson in
the Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World. The first
coins emerged in the later part of the seventh century
b c. E. In the Kingdom of Lydia, now located
in western Turkey. These evolved from the use of silver

(01:06):
ingots for trade throughout Mesopotamia and Egypt, certainly examples of
the sort of money that humans used at least as
far back as the third millennium b c. E. But
the coins of Lydia differed in that they were marked
with the emblem of the issuing body, ensuring consistent quality
and weight. In other words, transactions could be carried out

(01:29):
without the use of scales. We can summarize a lot
of monetary history in terms of this flow from bartered
goods to money to coinage, and we can look at
early forms of currency as symbols or receipts representing goods
stored elsewhere, such as grain. But there are examples that
seem to blur the lines between these distinctions. For example,

(01:52):
the Mayans and Aztecs used cocao beans and trade both
in bagged form and as a sort of change in
the form of loose, fermented and dried coco beans. These are,
after all, the raw ingredients responsible for chocolate, a prestigious
food in these cultures, plus by virtue of their botanical nature,
they already boast a highly consistent quality and weight. But

(02:14):
cocow beans were not the only form of edible money.
T also took on this role, particularly in Tibet, and
the reason has to do not only with the value
placed on tea, but also the use of compressed tea
bricks tea, particularly Chinese poor, is still widely available in
compressed bricks, cakes, discs, and even novelty shapes like hearts.

(02:38):
But as Wolfgang Birch points out in the use of
tea bricks is currency among the Tibetans in the Tibet Journal,
the Chinese introduced tea to Tibet sometime prior to seven
a d c. And while it was at first used
as more of a pure bartering commodity, it eventually took
a form that we might reasonably refer to as currents,

(03:00):
a regimented system of tea bricks based on the teas
quality and pureness, and eventually imprinted with trademarks and seals.
But of course this currency was one that you could
also brew into a delicious cup of tea. Salt, too,
can be added to this discussion, as salt bricks have
been used as currency in parts of Africa as well

(03:21):
as ancient Rome. In fact, is Shauna Freeman pointed out
in how Salt Works for how stuff Works dot Com,
the roots of the words soldier and salary can be
traced to Latin words related to the giving or receiving
of salt. There are times, therefore, when it is perfectly
reasonable to put your money where your mouth is. Tune

(03:50):
into additional editions of the Artifact each week, hosted by
either Joe or myself. As always, you can email us
at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

(04:11):
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