If they (and you) read up on what travelers, missionaries, & ethnographers actually witnessed & recorded of recently contacted cultures, you will find that SoV & medium of wealth transfer long preceded record-keeping. See https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/954225789129469952 … & refs in the linked articles.https://twitter.com/mikejcasey/status/981141578285805569 …
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This can be a good way to define things, but it's very different from standard economic definitions, so be careful. Graeber's theory, so far as I can discern his theory, is that early money *accompanies* debt, it doesn't itself usually take the *form of* debt.
Haha there has been a bunch of windmill-tilting on this subject going widely around in recent days, starting with Vitalik's comment. :-)
