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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back into fluctuating commodity monies (cowries, manillas) used to settle existing debts (arising from trade, murder and marriage) & exchange upstream (ivory, slaves flowed back not as goods transported by merchant caravans but through matrimonial alliances and circuits).
Speculative. Rejection of gold & silver could easily have had many other causes, e.g. (1) most clans didn't provide enough value from trade or relationships for higher-value silver much less gold to work better as payment, (2) networks effects (lock-in) of these other forms.
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empirics: monthly wage for a Kru Liberian seafarer in 1840 was 1£/gold doubloon (240 pence or 100 reales) Kru bridewealth was x20 that, paid mostly in brass money minted and purchased from local forgers. so satoshis are digital cowries? gold was only Ashanti royal currency.pic.twitter.com/5PggXhuciN
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Interesting thanks! Non-coin gold wasn't then widely circulated outside upper & merchant classes much of anywhere, AFAIK, and even in coin form smallest denomination too big for most. Wage stated per month but how often actually paid? Likely much more frequent than monthly.
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paid in bounties and lumpsum at contract end, in silver after merchants set up shop along coast & Kru could buy goods & diff. currencies directly. Silver peso was the only global currency but cowries have been the only universal currency (glass/porcelain beads r ersatz cowries)
End of conversation
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