The Origins of Money in Human Economy

For most of uman history, human economies predominated. What happens when they give way to or are taken over by commercial ones? This is another way of asking the question, how do mere obligations turn into debts? But it means examining the historical record to try to reconstruct what actually did happen. i will look at the roll of money in human economies then describe what can happen when human economies are suddenly incorporated into the economic orbits of larger commercial ones. The african slave trade will serve as a particularly catastrophic case in point. Then in the next chapter, i will return to the first emergence of commercial economies in early civilizations of europe and the middle east, money as inadequate substitute.