StarDestroyer.Net BBS

PainRack wrote:Were cash crops such as bananas ever used as currency? I remember someone garbling about how bananas and other fruit were held as standards of wealth in Dutch controlled Indonesia, as well as the Carribeans.

Well, just a few posts above yours I mentioned coca beans being used as currency by the pre-European Central Americans.

I suppose any staple crop is valid currency in an agrarian society.

Coca wasn't a staple crop - in fact, consumption of chocolate was largely restricted to the aristocracy - and is in no way as vital to life as things like corn and potatoes. Coca beans were a luxury item, even more so than today.

In a barter economy - some of which are quite large, such as Ancient Egypt and the Ancient American civilizations like the Aztec, Maya, Inca, etc. - staple crops are arguably a basic unit of exchange, but that doesn't mean it's currency in the same sense as coin or gems or other valuables are.

Grain worked as good currency, since it wasn't as perishable as fruit.

In the food as money category I'll nominate the tea bricks made from dried, ground tea leaves. They are used as long lasting food and beverage source, also doubled as currency in and around China.

Broomstick wrote:That, or at certain times and places, spices.

Cocoa beans have also been used as currency in the Western Hemisphere, but that was about 500 years ago.

Certainly. Cocoa beans had been used as currency in Mesoamerica (Kirschoff's term) for quite a while when the Spaniards came. More on that can be found in Jacques Soustelle's Daily Life Of The Aztecs.

Along with spices, it had the advantage of being quite durable in bean form (unlike fruits like, say, bananas), which made it apt and convenient to be used as currency.